“I hear you. I keep hearin’ you. What the hell is with you? I still think you’re pissed about Kmart closing down.”
“It’s not an easy thing to get over. But don’t change the subject. I’ll make sure Leonard gets as fair a shake as he can get. If it’s self-defense, I’ll do all I can to get him off. But I’ll tell you now. I’m comin’ after him, and if I discover you’ve had anything to do with hiding him, then I’m coming after you too.”
“You said I had twenty-four hours. My understanding of that was I found him during that time, could straighten out things, you wouldn’t bother me. Even if I did know where he was. Isn’t that right? I had twenty-four hours, didn’t I?”
“ Had. You got a lot less now. But I also said no promises if things changed around here.”
“Has something changed?”
Charlie let me hear the electricity in the phone for a while.
“Well, has it?” I asked.
“Just find Leonard,” Charlie said, “and listen close. I’m coming after you,” and he hung up.
I thought about that a moment, then understood what Charlie was trying to tell me. I called Leonard. I let it ring a couple times, hung up. Let it ring a couple times, hung up. Then repeated it. I hoped he’d realize it was some kind of code.
The third set of rings someone picked up the phone. I said, “This is me. If that’s you, might I suggest a stroll in the forest?”
The phone went dead. I took a moment to wonder if my phone was tapped, decided things had happened too quickly for that. I was okay. I was just feeling a streak of secret agent.
I pushed out of the phone booth and walked over to my truck. Down the road a piece I saw a yellow ’66 Pontiac parked next to the curb. There was a man sitting in it wearing a cowboy hat. He didn’t look like any of the cops I knew. He didn’t look like a cop. He didn’t look like anybody I knew, period. He didn’t seem to be watching me.
The phone booth was next to a 7-Eleven store. I went inside and bought a Diet Coke in a plastic bottle and a bag of peanuts. I drank the Diet Coke down a bit, poured peanuts into it, and went outside. I climbed into my truck and looked in my mirror. The Pontiac was gone.
Probably just some guy waiting for someone in one of the houses along the street. Or maybe he’d stopped to check a map. Pull his dick. Anything. I had to lighten up. I was starting to be one paranoid sonofabitch.
I drove away, an eye on the mirror, watching for yellow Pontiacs or low-flying stealth aircraft with radar.
9
I didn’t go directly home. I was sort of afraid to. I figured Charlie would be searching my place, and if Leonard had heeded my warning, he wouldn’t be there. It might also be better if I didn’t come up on Charlie and his folks going through my underwear drawer. I wouldn’t want to embarrass them.
I drove downtown and went to the all-day dollar movie and had popcorn. The popcorn was okay, but the movie wasn’t very good. I walked out about halfway through and stopped off at the yogurt joint and had a cone.
When I finished my cone, I cruised over to the bookshop and looked around the magazine rack. I didn’t see any Boobs and Butts there. Where did Charlie find that stuff? I hung around long enough the clerks began to watch me suspiciously. I bought a couple comic books, a Batman and a Spider-Man, and left.
When I got home, Leonard wasn’t there. I gave the house the once-over, went out on the back porch, and saw him strolling toward me from the woods. He had the twelve-gauge in one hand, a shovel over his shoulder, and I could see his revolver in the waistband of his pants.
Leonard smiled. “Thanks for the phone tip. I watched from the woods. Charlie and a blue suit showed up with the sheriff. They worked your lock and went inside and looked around.”
“That means they have a search warrant.”
“Probably. They were inside about twenty minutes.”
“They did good. I can’t tell they’ve been here. They even locked the door on the way out.”
“They looked around outside too. Found the sheets covered in pig shit.”
“They take the sheets with them?”
“No. At this point they probably haven’t put the pig shit and my daring escape together. I was smart enough to bury my clothes in the woods. I was going to do the sheets next. Actually, I don’t think putting me and the pig shit together is going to mean anything anyway.”
“You’re probably right about that. Something new has happened. Now you’re connected to all this officially, and Charlie had to come check my place as a likely hiding spot.”
We sat down on the back porch and I told Leonard what I had found at his house. Told him about my conversation with Charlie.
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“Was the stuff really wrecked? Were my books ruined?”
“They’re messed up. Some of them.”
“The TV’s screwed?”
“Looks that way. And the stereo.”
“Shit.”
“Your J. C. Penney’s suit was tossed on the floor too.”
“Now that fucker is dealing with dynamite.”
I nodded. “I knew that would get you.”
“Seems to me someone thinks I have something I don’t. If I do, I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know how I came by it or why I’d want it. And even if I did, that’s no excuse to fuck with a man’s J. C. Penney’s suit.”
“Or maybe they think Raul has something.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Leonard said.
“Or maybe they thought Horse Dick had something, and now they think Raul has it, and they thought he was hiding it at your house.”
“Or someone thinks what Horse Dick had and Raul had, I now have.”
“Or maybe it’s a disgruntled hair patron of Raul’s,” I said. “A little too much off the ears and he’s ready to flatten the kid’s head.”
“Come to think of it, he cut my hair once or twice, and I sort of avoided him after that. He tended to poke you with the scissors.”
“I’ll tell you this,” I said. “If I had something that the guy owning that shoe printed wanted, I might be inclined to give it to him. Help him carry it out to the car, give him a blow job, wipe his ass, give his car a push uphill.”
“That big, huh?”
“No. I just made all this shit up for your amusement.”
Leonard sighed. “Sorry. I’m beginning to think I was born under a bad sign… Do you think Raul’s dead?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s the news the cops got. Maybe to them it’s looking like you did him in too. I’m not saying he’s dead, I’m just saying if he is, it’ll compound things.”
“Jesus, I hope he’s all right. And not just for my sake.”
“We’re jumping a lot of ditches here for no reason, Leonard. We don’t know anything. Not really. Charlie gave me the impression something was up, though, but I think now it was just the fact they were going to search here and he figured you might be here. He’s trying to help. Guess it was good I called him when I did.”
“Long as we’re speculating, though, I just thought of something. What if the bikers didn’t know Horse Dick was gay?”
“Who says they care?” I said.
“I’ll stand by it for the moment. Considering most people aren’t that liberal about homosexuality, and these guys are about as open-minded as a scorpion. It’s a fuckin’ Dixie No Nigger Bar, for Christ sakes. You think it’s No Niggers But Queers Okay?”
“You never know.”
“Yeah, well, let’s place bets. So if the bikers first heard about Horse Dick being gay from me when I knocked knots on his head and uttered my classic line about his fuckin’ around with my boyfriend, could be they got rid of him themselves. They figured I’d get the blame, and that way they could kill two birds – or two fags, if you will – with one shotgun blast.”
“That’s a possibility, I guess, but that doesn’t explain your house being tossed. My guess is the incidents may not have anything to do with one another. They just unfortunately came together at the same time.”