"I've kept up with this case, even though it isn't mine. Know what I'm sayin'?"
"Sure."
"Florida went in there, tried to see this Soothe as some kind of martyr, and what he was was an asshole. No one disagrees on that. His own folks didn't have nothing to do with him. Everybody was glad he got dead and wasn't nothing more to worry about. Those recordings, the songs written down. That was just his line of shit. No one believes there were any recordings, written songs. None of that stuff. So no one much cared what happened to the guy. Except Florida. And I figure her trying to find out about what happened to Soothe, she maybe put her nose where it didn't belong, and got it pinched. But good. Same stuff you and Leonard think. Nothing new."
"Well, someone cared about Soothe. Or was worried about him. His body was stolen."
"Ranger, Highway boys, think it was voodoo shit."
"Voodoo is primarily charm stuff, mixed with a little Christianity. East Texas cops love to think devil worshippers or movie-style voodoo business is going on in the backwoods. It makes them feel their job is a little more important, less boring if they're dealing with El Diablo."
"Yeah, I see that. I could use a little voodoo now and then. This old-fashioned crime, drugs, spouse abuse, good ole boy murders are wearing me out. As for Soothe, all I know is the body's gone and there's no evidence where it might be. Florida, she was sure this Cantuck had Soothe murdered. A racist thing. I don't think that stands up so good. I think Cantuck done that, he wouldn't have been trying to keep you from getting killed. This Officer Reynolds, I don't know nothin' about him."
"He's some piece of work is what he is, but I can't prove he did anything. He might not be any worse than Cantuck, who seems to be all right on some days. I sort of like it better like the old movies, where you could tell who the villain was because they wore black and twirled their mustache. What's never been explained to me, Charlie, is how Cantuck knew me and Leonard were in trouble."
"Instinct."
"Saying he had a hot flash sheet-heads were trying to kill us, so he saddled up Trigger and came after us?"
"Way he tells it, he packed you up, sent you on your way, got to feeling guilty 'cause the two of you weren't in that good a shape, decided he ought to make you park Leonard's junker and take you into LaBorde. So, he went to catch up with you. I believe him. I think he's a fart on the surface, but underneath he smells a little better, just sometimes he's got to settle down long enough for the sweetness to surface."
"So right in the middle of a rerun of The Beverly Hillbillies he decided he was an asshole and ought to come out and check on us?"
"He never got home. Drove to the office, got to thinking about it from there, came after you."
"And in the meantime, Big Butt Draighten and his buddies just happened to spot us and come after us?"
"Yeah."
"Kind of coincidental, isn't it?"
"Life's full of 'em, but I don't see this as coincidence. Those shitters saw you, followed you out, and Cantuck, not being a bad guy, got to feeling like a turd, came to check on you. Everything comes together. It's not that wild."
"What about Bacon?"
"Like I said, I don't know. But them finding out Bacon helped you might not be that hard. People see things, people talk."
Charlie went into the kitchen to fill his coffee cup. He stood at the counter and drank it. I went in there and sat at the kitchen table with my empty cup. He got the coffee pot and poured me what was left.
"Going with me to Leonard's?" he asked.
"Not this time," I said. "I'll call him later. Maybe I'll drive over there."
"Sure. You know, he's healing up fast. Moving around pretty good. 'Cept for his leg. You should go by and see him."
"I will."
Charlie sipped the last of his coffee, put the cup in the sink, said, "Sometimes, under stress, guys close as skin and bone can feel a kind of, I don't know, postpartum-style depression."
"Neither Leonard nor I have recently given birth, Charlie."
"Postpartum Scary Event Syndrome."
"What?"
"I just made that up. Say something bad happens to a couple guys and they survive it, and these guys are real close, and danger makes them even closer. Am I goin' too fast?"
"I think I can manage, if I concentrate real hard."
"This scary business is over, these two guys, they kind of divorce each other, find reasons not to be together, blame each other, outside sources, 'cause when the two them get together, they connect with a bad memory."
"You trying to say something about me and Leonard, Char¬lie?"
"I'm sayin' maybe you and Leonard have seen something in each other or yourselves you didn't know was there. It's like them movie star marriages."
"Now there's a jump."
"Woman marries some guy wants to be an actor, big star. She knows him when he's down and out, crying at night 'cause he can't make it in the industry, or maybe he can't get a hard-on he's so depressed. She knows he cuts big ones in the toilet and fills their little two-room apartment with shit stink, and they can't even afford the goddamn matches that need to be struck to burn out the smell. Then, this guy, who wipes his butt just like everyone else, he hits the big time. Feels he's got to get rid of the old wife on account of she knew him when he wasn't quite so glamorous. Now he's got the big house and a shitter in a room about the size of the old apartment, got some blowers, de-stinkers, whatever that stuff is, and he's able to separate himself from some of the human problems. Stays hard all the time 'cause he's got nothing but big-tittied young blondes coming in and out of his bed trying to see who best can grease his sausage. Everyone tells him he's wonderful, a goddamn god. So he don't want someone around who's seen him at his worst, his most human, knows what he knows—that he ain't no god. He's just a regular guy and no better than anyone else."
"I've known Leonard for years, and I know his shit stinks. I've been with him through thick and thin and neither one of us has hit the big time, so we don't have to worry about that angle. I'm just worn down, that's all. I don't feel like visiting. Fact is, I'm sort of waiting on you to leave."
"Sure you haven't got some kind of tobacco?"
"I'm sure."
Charlie nodded, scratched his temple, looked at some dandruff under his fingernail, wiped it on his pants and leaned against the sink. "Let me see now," he said. "I had some kind of point. Oh yeah. Thing is, instead of the big time, two of you thought you were invincible."
"I never said that I was invincible."
"No, but you thought it. Leonard did anyway, and I think you thought he was invincible on some level. Could take anything and come out on top. And when the two of you are together, well, you're like the biggest dogs in the junkyard. But you ain't. You're just two dogs and there's always someone bigger, smarter, and meaner."
"I owe you for this session?"
"First session's free. Maybe you've seen little shadows, chinks in your and Leonard's armor, and you don't like it. It's nothing to be ashamed of. No one is anything better than human. Just some humans are better humans than others, but the best humans are still just human. In the end, we all end up like that squirrel out there."
"Save it for the Rotary, man."
"Sometimes you got to look shadows in the eye, or see if they've got eyes. You don't, they flutter around you from then on."
"You're hittin' all over the place, and isn't any of it on target."
"Keep a gun around at night, Hap? I don't mean in the house, I mean close by. You do that, man? Something you're constantly aware of, this gun?"
"Hell no. Why would I?"
"It's just I saw one stuffed under the couch cushion. You got to not get in such a hurry, you hide somethin', Hap. Got to take your time and do it right."
"You don't know everything, Charlie."
"Yeah, you're right, I'm an asshole. I know this though, you throw a shovelful of dirt over that squirrel, when the rain stops and the wind's blowin', he won't stink so much."