“Cousin?”
“That’s right. Truth is, he hired me to come up with the club, but then it caught on. Who knew? But the main thing is, that interview should promote the carnival in the next town, wherever that might be.”
“Atlanta, Texas.”
“Good. Now, where is he?”
“Do you really know Strangler?”
“Boy, do I,” Jane said. “All right. I’m not his cousin, and there’s no fan club.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
“Can I speak to you privately?” she said.
“I suppose so.”
Jane walked off with the carny and whispered something and came back to join us. The carny, looking a little stunned, went back to the rickety rides.
“I got directions to Strangler’s trailer,” she said.
“What did you tell him?” I said.
“That I was pregnant with Strangler’s baby.”
“And he believed you?”
“It’s a better story than the fan club one.”
Strangler’s trailer was a colorful one with a painting of him on the side. In the painting he had on wrestling shorts and shoes and he was bare-chested and well muscled. He had bright red hair.
The door to the trailer was open, and we could see Strangler sitting inside on a stool reading a comic book. He had on wrestling shorts, wrestling shoes, and a big gray sweatshirt.
Jane knocked on the side of the trailer, “Knock, knock, Mr. Strangler.”
Strangler looked up. He resembled the painting on the side of the trailer enough you could tell it was him, but he had gone a little to fat. His red hair was touched with gray around the ears.
“Who are you?” he said, without getting up.
“We’ve come to see you don’t get killed by a couple of gangsters,” Jane said. “Do Bad Tiger and Timmy ring a bell?”
Strangler tossed the comic on the floor. “Come in,” he said.
We went inside. There was a couch and a chair, and through an open door I could see a bed.
“What do you know about them guys?” he said.
“What we know,” said Jane, “is that they have guns, they are mean, they don’t like you, and they want some money back.”
“They do, huh?”
“Listen here,” Jane said. “We know why you stole it, and we get it. We do. The money, that’s not any of our business, not with what you had in mind about your daughter, but they really are serious.”
“I ain’t got no daughter,” Strangler said.
“No?” I said.
He shook his head. “I told them that so my reasons for stealing the money would be better than theirs. I just wanted the money.”
“You lied to a couple of gangsters to feel better about yourself?” Jane said.
I was thinking this was exactly what Jane did all the time. She’d rather climb a tree and lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.
“Yeah. I didn’t want to just be a criminal. I’m no criminal.”
“Actually,” Jane said, “you are the definition of a criminal. You stole money from a bank.”
“I know, but I mailed it back. I mailed it back the second day after it was stolen. It took four good-sized boxes. I used the address on the money bags. I sent it from a post office in some little town. I forget the name.”
“You seem pretty open about it,” I said.
“If you know I had the money, and you know Bad Tiger and Timmy, what’s the use lying?”
Okay, he wasn’t exactly like Jane.
“Well,” Jane said. “You may not see yourself as a criminal, but Bad Tiger and Timmy are criminals, and they see you as one. A crook that took their money. They want it back, and then they want to shoot you. They’ll do it. We saw Timmy kill a man.”
“That would be Buddy,” Strangler said. “He was hit in the robbery. And pretty bad.”
“Did you shoot anyone?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I was outside in the car. I was the driver. A bank guard shot Buddy. We hadn’t no more than driven out of there with the loot than Timmy was looking at Buddy like he had to go. He didn’t want to play nursemaid, drag him around. I could see it in his eyes. I was certain of it.”
“Good call,” Jane said. “He shot him, all right, and you’re next. We found you easy, and so will they. I’m surprised they haven’t already. They’re bound to show eventually.”
“I figure the same,” Strangler said. “My guess is they didn’t find me ’cause the carnival has been in Missouri and Arkansas. This is the first week we been in Texas. So if they been in East Texas, they been having to wait on me.”
“It’s not exactly sneaky,” Jane said, “to go back to your old line of work in a trailer with your name and likeness on the side of it.”
“I ain’t running. I sent the money back. I’m no criminal.”
“Yeah,” Jane said. “You keep saying that.”
“I’m through running,” Strangler said. “I’m just going to hit people in the ring.”
“And those bad boys are going to shoot you,” she said, “and when they find out you gave the money back, they’re going to shoot you a lot.”
“Let them,” Strangler said. “I don’t care. I ain’t running. I gave the money back. I just got sideways for a time there. This Great Depression, as they call it, it got to me. Not having any money and thinking my future wasn’t nothing but twisting people in knots and throwing them around. What do I do when I get old? So I got in with some bad people who wanted my muscle. I guess I’d seen too many gangster movies. My mama didn’t raise me that way, and I come to that conclusion after we robbed that bank and I saw Buddy take a bullet. We could have killed some of them citizens. I decided it was better to starve. Thanks for trying to help me, but you kids go away.… Wake him up.”
Tony was asleep on the couch. He had sort of wadded up there and gone right out.
“We’ve had a rough few days,” Jane said. “All because we were coming here to help you.”
“That was some of it,” I said. “Don’t forget the adventure part. Speaking symbolically, of course.”
“Oh, go to hell,” Jane said, and went out of the trailer.
“She likes you,” Strangler said.
“You think?”
“Oh yeah. Can’t say how much, but the ones you irritate like that, they like you. They got to like you to get that mad.”
“No daughter, huh?” I said.
“Nope,” he said. “Made it up.”
44
I woke Tony and pulled him off the couch, and we caught up with Jane as she was leaving the carnival lot. The carny we had first spoke to crossed our path on the way out.
He said, “He going to treat you right?”
“No,” Jane said, pausing. “I don’t believe he is.”
“I’m sorry,” the carny said. “That isn’t very stand-up.”
“No,” Jane said, “it isn’t.”
“I know it don’t help much, but here,” said the carny, and gave her a handful of tickets. “These will get you and your friends in, and give you all the rides you want.”
“Thanks,” said Jane, and she stuffed them in her pants pocket, headed across the street to where the truck was parked.
When we were all in the truck, I said, “I didn’t mean to make you mad back there.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “It isn’t you. I figured it was going to be like in a picture show where we save someone’s life, and his kid gets her foot fixed, and so on. I was expecting a happy ending. Now he’ll just get shot and nobody’s foot got fixed.”
“None to fix,” I said.
“That’s what’s disappointing,” Jane said. “Strangler is just like you said. He’s a big idiot. Let’s get out of here. He’s made his bed, now he can lie in it. Let’s go back to Tyler.”