“Who are you?” the cop said.
“A fan. I run his fan club. He doesn’t know it yet, but we just started one. We came here to tell him that, and that’s how we got mixed up in all this mess. We’re from Oklahoma.”
“Oklahoma?” the stocky cop said.
“Yeah, state just above Texas,” Jane said.
The thin cop grinned. The stocky cop said, “Yeah, girlie, I know where it is. But why did you come all the way from Oklahoma?”
“We are all fans of Strangler,” she said. “Right?”
She looked at us when she said that.
Tony nodded.
I nodded.
“Fans?” said the stout cop.
“Big fans,” Jane said.
“So you heard of Strangler here, and you come all the way down from Oklahoma to tell him you’re starting a fan club?”
“Well,” Jane said, resting a hand on Strangler’s shoulder, “it’s a little more complicated than that. We didn’t like the weather, the drought, the sand, the grasshoppers, the starving rabbits, the centipedes everywhere, the scorpions, and did I mention the dust?”
“You did,” said the stocky cop. “You’re a little smarty, ain’t you?”
“I like to think so,” Jane said.
“That’s not what I meant,” said the cop.
“All I’m saying, sir, is we’ve had a hard time, and we were very excited to be here, to finally tell our hero about the fan club. And frankly, we were looking for a job with the carnival. Strangler has quite a following in Oklahoma and the South. East Texas especially. We thought a fan club would be nice. And we thought a quarter per membership could add up.”
“So it was a way to make money?” said the thin cop.
“Money,” Jane said, “and a way to honor our hero. We just came to tell him. We wanted his blessing. Course, I’ll be honest with you. With or without it, we were going to form the fan club anyway.”
“So, fan club aside,” said the stocky cop. “How’d all this happen?”
“Simple,” Jane said.
“Don’t you talk?” the stocky cop said to Strangler.
“Yeah, but she’s explaining real good,” Strangler said.
“As fate would have it,” Jane said, “we tracked Strangler down, came by to tell him about our plans, and those two dreadful men, they tried to rob him. The man that crashed the popcorn stand, he shot that man on the floor there over some argument. We don’t even really understand what he was mad about, do we?”
This was directed at all of us.
Tony shook his head.
I shook mine.
Strangler said, “Yeah, it was kind of confusing.”
“My take,” Jane said, “if you want it, is they come to rob poor Strangler here, they didn’t want to share it with one another. You know the story. No honor among thieves. My guess is they were already feuding over something and it got carried into their work, so to speak. It came to a head right here.”
“Why would they want to rob you any more than anyone else here?”
“I don’t know,” Strangler said. “I don’t have anything.”
“He’s famous,” Jane said. “Fame draws good and it draws bad. They were bad.”
“I’ll say,” said the cop.
“They thought he had money,” Jane said. “Just because he’s a famous fighter, they thought he had some real dough. But, alas. He does most of what he does for the love of it. Right, Strangler?”
“Right,” Strangler said.
“For the love of it, huh?” said the stocky cop.
“You know who that was?” said the thin cop. “The one that ate the popcorn stand? That was Bad Tiger.”
“The gangster?” Jane said. “Oh my. And who’s that on the floor, Dillinger?”
“Timmy Durango,” said the stocky cop. “He goes by other names, but that’s his real one. He’s bad as any of them. It was Bad Tiger, though, that was the brains.”
“He ain’t got any now,” said the thin cop, “unless you want to gather them up and put them in a popcorn bag.”
“Crime doesn’t pay,” Jane said. “And that’s just the long and the short of the matter, don’t you think?”
“You really do talk a lot,” the stocky cop said to Jane.
“It’s a gift,” she said.
49
We spent some time down at the station while Strangler was with the doctor getting the bullets pulled out, and we all told the story Jane told. It wasn’t that good a story, but it was as good as any other. No one even thought Strangler might have ever robbed a bank. And if they thought there was any stinky fish in our story, they didn’t say so, least not direct-like.
When it was over, the cops drove us back to Strangler’s trailer, which was the only place we had to stay, and we took a nap. Tony on the couch, me and Jane sleeping in chairs. When we woke up, Strangler still wasn’t home, but we were hungry.
We found some bread and canned goods and made sandwiches, and were eating when Strangler came in. He was dressed in a loose shirt and dress pants and regular shoes. They were the clothes he took with him when the police hauled us off.
I felt kind of funny, us eating his food and him standing there in the doorway. Jane, however, seemed quite comfortable.
Jane said, “Can I fix you something?”
“I’m all right,” he said. “That was some lie you told,” he said to Jane.
“It’s her specialty,” I said.
“I just felt the truth lacked something,” she said.
“They believed it good enough,” he said. “They’re just happy to have public enemies off the charts. Those two had let me go and gone on about their business, they’d be alive today. Well, Bad Tiger might be. I think he was planning to shoot Timmy all along.”
“About the money, Strangler,” Jane said.
“I know. I lied to everyone, then lied to myself, but it’s something to have a liar like you call me on lying.”
“Mine doesn’t hurt anyone,” she said. “It helped.”
“This time,” I said.
“All right, this time,” Jane said. “But you got all that money, and that’s the bank’s money.”
“Banks aren’t people,” Strangler said.
“Sure they are,” Jane said. “Who do you think puts money in the bank?”
Strangler went over and sat on the trunk with the money. He said, “Yeah. I know. I know good. I really did intend to send it back. I mean, I do intend to send it back. I kept it to look at for a while. To think about what I might have done had I kept it.”
“You might have spent about ten years in jail,” Jane said. “You still might.”
“You’d say something about it?” Strangler said.
“I don’t know,” Jane said.
“Me either,” I said.
“I wouldn’t tell,” Tony said. “Me, I don’t care. I could use some money.”
I could tell that sort of hit Strangler where he lived.
“Nah, you ain’t that way,” Strangler said to Tony. “You and me, we ain’t like that. I made a mistake, but I got to make it right.”
“Don’t make it so right you go to jail,” I said.
“I’m not wanting to make it that right,” he said. “Tomorrow, I get some boxes, and you kids help me mail it back. That all right?”
“I suggest we drive someplace not so close to mail it,” Jane said. “They might trace it somehow, and if they see it come from around here, and they get to thinking about Bad Tiger and Timmy looking you up, it could all come together, and not in a good way.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Strangler said.
“We can pack boxes with the money,” Jane said, “and we can make a note with words cut from newspapers and glue them on paper. We can put the note inside one of the boxes with the money. It can say something like: Here’s the money back, sorry. No signature, of course”
“That sounds good,” Strangler said.