Nothing like old memories.
Me and Leonard spent a few minutes watching a young blond lady with scissors snip hair out of an elderly man’s nose, but when the hairs being snipped began to yield little gooies on their stalks, I lost interest.
Finally a man came over to help us. He was short and pale-skinned and had his dark hair combed back tight and plastered with something so shiny you could almost see your reflection in it. He had one of those pencil-thin mustaches like forties movie stars wore, ones make you look like you had a drink of chocolate milk and forgot to wipe your mouth. He had his colorful shirt open almost to his navel, and let me tell you, that was no treat to view. He had a chest like a bird and a little potbelly and a thin straight line of hair that ran from chest to navel and looked as if it had been provided by the nose hairs the blonde had clipped. He was wearing a gold medallion on a chain around his neck. The medallion reminded me of those aluminum-foil coins you unwrap and find chocolate inside. He must have been on the bad side of forty. A face, a body like that, you’re not born with it. It takes some real abuse and neglect to create.
“May I ’elp you, messieurs. I am Pierre.”
His accent was right out of Peppie Le Pew, the Warner Brothers cartoon skunk, with maybe a bit of the Frito Bandito thrown in. Not quite Spanish, not quite French, all false.
“Pierre?” Leonard said. “You’re really named Pierre?”
“That ees correct.”
“Where’s Antone?” Leonard asked.
“There is no Antone,” Pierre said. “It’s jest a name I liked.”
“Then you’re the owner?” I asked.
He nodded. “What ees the thing I can due fer yew?” Pierre said, and his accent was even less identifiable now. Some German seemed to have slipped into it.
Leonard gave Raul’s name and said, “Seems he was killed. Murdered. It’s been in the papers, so you probably knew that.”
“Oh, my,” Pierre said. “I do not read zee papers.”
Leonard gave me a knowing look, one that put me in Pierre’s camp.
“I knew eee was missing. The cops, zey ’ave been ’ere. But ded, dis I deed not know.”
“What we want to know,” I said, “is about this deal you have with your graduates cutting hair in people’s homes.”
“Eet ees all zee rage,” Pierre said. “Ze wealthy customers, zey love it. Raul, he was, a, how yew zey… goode one. Unlike some.”
Pierre glanced at a young man who was cutting furiously at a woman’s long blond hair. The guy had a strained look on his face like he had never done this before, and knew even if he did it again he wouldn’t be any better.
Pierre turned back to us. “Some, zey are quite… how you say
… ’opeless.”
“Did Raul do a lot of these jobs?” Leonard asked.
“Some. Eee may ’ave done others I dew not know of. But many customers called ’ere, for referrals. We gave Raul some of zeees referrals. Eet ees part of our zervice to graduates.”
“Can you tell us who these people were?” I asked.
“Are you with ze po-leece?”
“No,” Leonard said.
“Zen… I don’t know.”
“We’re not askin’ you to turn over the secrets to the atomic bomb,” Leonard said.
“We’re friends of Raul, and we’d like to talk to people who knew him,” I said. “It’s for his parents. We’re kind of… you know
… trying to piece together his life for them. Something they can cling to. You understand?”
Pierre nodded, and when he spoke this time, he almost sounded tongue-tied. “I suppose zere is nofhing rong weeth zat.”
We followed him into his office. He sat down behind his desk while we stood. He rummaged in a drawer, came up with a leather-bound file book. He opened it, ran his finger along a page. He stopped, made a satisfied noise, found a pad and pen and wrote down a couple of names for us, gave them to Leonard.
“Just these two?” Leonard said.
“Eee cut zere ’air regularly,” Pierre said. “Others eee set up on ees own, for zem, I can not ’elp yew.”
“Wee-wee,” Leonard said.
“It’s merci,” I said.
“No,” Leonard said. “I have to wee-wee. You got a john here, Frenchy?”
We sat out in the parking lot and looked at what Pierre had given us.
Leonard said, “Hope that guy ain’t gay. He could give our whole sexual orientation a bad name.”
“Let me tell you,” I said. “He’s heterosexual, he’s not doing us any good either.”
“What kind of fucking accent was that?” Leonard asked. “It changed from one word to the next.”
“It was a bullshit accent is what it was. Closest Pierre’s been to France, or anything French, is a croissant. Maybe he’s been to Paris, Texas.”
“I hear that,” Leonard said. “Don’t you know that fucker is worn out at the end of the day. Trying to remember what spin he’s been putting on particular words. Hell, he made me tired just to listen to him. What are the names he wrote down?”
“Charles Arthur. Bill Cunningham.”
“Whoa,” Leonard said. “Charles Arthur. You know who that is, don’t you?”
“No.”
“King Arthur, the chili king. King Arthur Chili, like it said on the pad in the Jiffy bag.”
“I know who King Arthur is,” I said. “I just didn’t know him as Charles Arthur.”
“The pad in the Jiffy bag, then the name coming up at Antone’s, that’s certainly coincidental.”
“There’s lots of those pads,” I said. “They give them out free all over town. Raul cut Arthur’s hair, probably picked up a notebook while he was there. King Arthur could have given it to him.”
“With coded numbers written on it?”
“You got a point there,” I said. “But Raul could have brought the book home and Horse Dick could have written down the coded numbers for some reason. It could have been something he was working on. That makes more sense to me, actually.”
“Maybe,” Leonard said. “And still, Raul could have picked it up while cutting Arthur’s hair. Sneaked it.”
“I have to ask the same question. Why?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t we drive out to the plant, see if we can find King Arthur?”
“Big shot like him,” I said. “I bet he’s never there.”
“Yeah, but we got to start somewhere,” Leonard said. “Or how else we gonna get in our annoyance quota.”
KING ARTHUR CHILI ENTERPRISES, as the sign over the huge gate read, was way out in the country and set on about twenty-five acres. It was a cluster of big buildings that stank. One side of the acreage was a meat-processing plant, the other side housed the place where the chili peppers were ground and the chili was whipped up and shoved into and sealed in cans. The whole place smelled of hot pepper and drying blood.
There was a rendering plant out back of it all, and twice a week at night the stink of it was absolutely awesome. It was where the tougher meat, the hides and horns, and the occasional old horse were processed into soap, fertilizer, and other odds and ends. Or at least I think they still made soap out of old horses. Maybe not.
Joint used to pump out dead cow and horse stink in the form of greasy black smoke all the time, until city ordinances got tight and King had to start letting loose with his garbage smoke late at night, twice a week.
It was such a stout stink that sometimes, the wind was blowing just right, it would travel out as far as where I lived, slip in through the windows and gouge my nose until I came awake. On the side of town where Leonard lived, twice a week it would damn near slay you.