“I did,” Leonard said. “But when I got alone, I decided I didn’t want to be alone. Where you been?”
I told him.
“Glad to hear it. I thought you’d given up dating.”
“So did I,” I said.
“How’d it go?”
“Good. I think.”
Leonard grew silent. I could tell something was wrong, that he was trying to maintain a front of control, so I didn’t throw off his game plan. I let him lead. Eventually, he said, “I have something I’d like to tell you, something I’d like to show you.”
I sat down on the couch and waited. Leonard had his pipe with him, the one he smokes now and then. He packed it carefully because his hands were shaking. He lit it and puffed. He used the remote to turn off the television.
He said, “So I’m sittin’ home alone, thinking, always a dangerous thing for me, and I ask myself, this videotape business, it’s obvious someone is looking for something, and it’s on video. What could it be?”
“And the answer is?”
“I didn’t come up with anything. I asked myself another question. Why would they come to my place to look for the video? That one seemed obvious.”
“Raul,” I said. “We’ve determined that possibility already.”
“That’s right. Raul got a video belongs to someone else, and whoever it belongs to, they go looking for it.”
“So why didn’t they check Horse Dick’s place instead of yours?”
“I thought of that. I called Charlie and said, ‘You know my place was trashed because someone was looking for something. What about Horse Dick’s joint?’ Charlie tells me, yeah, it was wrecked. I tell him about my videos missin’, and we get to talkin’, and he says he was the one inspected Horse’s place and didn’t remember seeing any videotapes there. Didn’t think about it at the time. Wasn’t looking for any. But he recalled a VCR, and now that he thought about it, that didn’t make sense. Could be that way, you know, like Horse Dick only rents videos, but usually where there’s a VCR there’s a videotape or two. You know what else Charlie told me?”
“No.”
Leonard took a deep breath on this one. “This is hard, man. Raul, he didn’t die from hitting that tree. Wasn’t shot either. Charlie, he got back to headquarters after the funeral, and he’s bawlin’ his men out, ones looked over the hill, and they showed him pictures and video, Hap. Pictures of the tree, the hill, and Horse Dick’s body, and all along the woods, and guess what?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Raul wasn’t there.”
“They overlooked him.”
“No. They didn’t miss him. Charlie pushes for the autopsy report, looks it over. Coroner, he’d been told to just take it like it looks: someone, assailants unknown, killed Horse Dick, and Raul died in the motorcycle crash. Chief, he don’t want to deal with any other possibilities because of fearin’ it might connect with a gay killin’, then it would come out Horse Dick was a butt-hole bandit and a cop. Thing is, Raul was thrown off the bike, but that didn’t kill him. Whoever they is, ones shot Horse Dick, somebody… They took Raul with them.”
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “They took him, kept him a while, hooked some kind of battery to his balls and gave him a jumpstart. Several times. Coroner thinks they wetted him up to get the kind of contact they wanted with the cables. They broke his foot. Probably stomped it. They used some kind of bat or board on his knees and shins. They pushed all his fingers back till they broke. They broke his arms and twisted them behind his back and cranked them around some more, making those nerves jump. They finally twisted his neck with some kind of garotte, stove in his head with something heavy, stuck his noggin back in the helmet, took him out there and dumped him where they got him.”
“Christ, Leonard. You’re sure?”
“Charlie’s sure. The coroner’s sure. Raul was lyin’ out there rotting these last few days, but he hasn’t been there the whole time.”
I sat amazed, a little sick to my stomach. “I’m surprised Charlie would tell you all this.”
“You heard what Charlie said earlier. Chief’s tied his hands. Won’t let Charlie do what needs to be done. Ain’t no one gonna do much about this shit. Couple queers aced is almost good business far as the chief’s concerned. As for Charlie, he sounds dispirited. Like he’s losin’ his will to be a cop. So, it’s you and me, bubba.”
I thought about that a moment. I said, “I don’t know it’s our place to deal with something like this, Leonard. It’s police business. I think what Charlie’s implying is we find something good, something helpful, we report it. But he’s not suggesting we take the law into our own hands.”
“You’re not listening, Hap. It’s police business when they want to make it their business. They don’t make it their business, then I got to make it my business.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Maybe I’ll put it to music and you’ll like it better. You want to hear the rest of what I think?”
“Yeah.”
“I think they – whoever they is – tortured Raul for the whereabouts of the tape or tapes. Raul wasn’t a tough guy, but he must have felt strong about this one, Hap, ’cause he didn’t give it up. He lied. Told them what they wanted was where it wasn’t. They tried him out. They checked Horse Dick’s place. No dice. So they talk to him some more in that special way they have. So now he puts them on my place, thinkin’ he’s gainin’ some time to maybe get away. Or maybe he is a tough guy. Tougher than I knew. Whatever, he puts them on me ’cause maybe he thought I could handle them. Figured he sent them there and I was there, I’d handle them. Or maybe he didn’t give a shit about me. But the thing is, they tossed my place and didn’t find anything. They decide to give Raul a little more business, or maybe they just got tired of his bullshit and finished him. Or maybe he died sooner than they expected. Thing is, he goes out without giving them what they want to know.”
Leonard paused to relight his pipe. I said, “Question immediately comes to mind is, how do you know they didn’t find the video? Maybe it was at your place and you didn’t know it. Raul had a house key, could have hid it there. Or maybe they went to your place first, hit Horse Dick’s second. Maybe he had it.”
“I thought of that,” Leonard said. “But I also thought Raul might have hid it somewhere else. So my next question was, where would he hide it? Remember what I told you about all the crap going on at my place, my mail being screwed around with-”
“The other address,” I said.
“That’s why you’re my friend,” Leonard said. “You can keep up with me. Almost. Mailbox out here isn’t checked often. I come out maybe once every month or so. It doesn’t get any mail to speak of anymore since I switched back to the town address. Mostly just junk mail. It’s a huge mailbox, so it’s a pretty safe place to leave something. I drove over tonight, got out my trusty flashlight, looked in the mailbox, and what do you think I found?”
“That Jiffy bag by your chair,” I said.
“Bingo, my man. That and some junk mail. And you won’t believe what’s in the Jiffy.”
Leonard grabbed the Jiffy bag, took a little notebook out of it and tossed it at me. I grabbed it and looked at it. It was a standard promotional-style notebook for King Arthur Chili, a local business.
“I couldn’t make heads or tails out of that,” Leonard said. “Wait before you look. There’s a couple of videotapes inside as well. I’ve seen one of them. I got it loaded in the VCR. I want you to see it.”
Leonard plucked the remote out of his lap, turned on the set and the VCR. I moved over and stood behind him to watch.
There was static and darkness, then gray shapes. The gray shapes became clearer, but never too clear. One of the shapes was a tanker-style truck. It was parked and a hose was being fed from it into a hole in cement, a hole like a cistern, and you could hear the sound of a pump sucking up the contents of the cistern, running it into the truck. The other gray shapes were two men with the truck. One of them was scrawny, with longish hair and a dark cap of some kind. He had on jeans and a jean jacket with the sleeves cut out. No shirt. Classic TV and movie-biker garb. The other guy wore jeans and a dark T-shirt and jackboots. He had long hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked about fifty-five or so and was about the size of the Green Giant who sells peas on the commercials.