“Well, I stayed up there in the tree, and fell asleep between two limbs. When I woke up and looked down the next mornin’, the gator was gone. I climbed down and went home. When I was able to go back to school, I did, but with Jimmy gone they sent out some social workers and discovered the stepmom was gone too, and I got put in foster care for a while, but I didn’t get along with nobody, so ended up in an orphanage until I run off at sixteen.
“Course, before that, Danny was missed and he was looked for, and his buddies said he followed me home. I told the nuns and the cops I had thrown rocks at them, and they had run off, and that was the last I had seen of Danny. They didn’t believe me, but that was my story and I stuck the fuck to it. In time they gave up on me, and that’s when I went to those foster homes, and then the orphanage, and then I run off. They brought me back twice, but finally I was old enough to get emancipated, and that’s what I did. Then, one night, in Houston, in a bar, I was sitting on a stool, minding my own business, which was drinking a beer and chattin’ up a good-looking brunette with a set of titties you could use as a water float, when in comes this fellow all pissed off. I had just put my hand on her thigh, and she was wearing a dress so short, when she moved, her skimpy underpants looked like something crawling. This fellow, he had a knife and he meant to use it, and did. He cut my arm with a slash, and then I took it away from him, and in the commotion the girl ran off and the guy ended up with the blade in his throat, and when it was over, I looked up and the bar was empty except for the bartender and four guys in Hawaiian shirts, and one of them, a big guy with a nose that spread over his face like it was some kind of animal, says to me: ‘That was pretty nifty, Injun. You want a job?’
“And so they cleaned up the place and threw away that dead guy like he was trash, and when the cops came I was gone and no one left there remembered a thing, ’cause they all worked for the big man who had spoken to me and this made their memories bad. Well, there was the bartender. But he said he hadn’t seen a thing either, and all them other people had run off, including the good-looking brunette with the good tits and the crawling undies. I found out all this from the flat-nosed guy, ’cause I made a deal to meet him somewhere and go to work for him, and the work was to my liking. I killed people for money.”
Tonto paused and opened a can of beer and drank a big sip. “And I been at it ever since, except for a time when I was an investment banker.”
“That’s a joke, right?” I said.
“Big-time,” he said.
“You don’t mind my asking,” I said, “how come you owe Marvin a favor? Why are you here?”
“Simple thing,” he said. “I ended up with this gal who was better for me than I was for her, and she didn’t have any idea the job I had. She thought I was an insurance salesman. We had this boy. Good-lookin’ kid, and I loved him, and I thought I might go straight. Planned on it. Just couldn’t quite get out of the business. Like a drunk looking for the next drink, you know. Wantin’ to quit, but getting too much out of it.
“So when my boy, Kevin, was twelve a guy talked him into a car and did things to him, and my boy, he didn’t live. They found his body beside the road, and my wife, she cut her wrists, and if there was any chance of me being the Christian I thought I’d grow up to be, be anything like the nuns said I ought to be, that was it, it was over. I was already fucked, but this was the big fuck. I believe, and I’m loyal to the faith in my heart, but in my hands and in my mind and in my deeds I’m not. But the guy did it, he got caught and he was tried, and they couldn’t prove it. And when he got loose he got drunk and admitted he did it, and the guy he told at a bar, he told the papers, and then it was all over the place, and this guy, he said, ‘Yeah, I did it, but there’s no second bite at the apple.’
“Even child molesters usually have enough sense to know what they do shouldn’t be admitted to, but not this guy. He was proud, and it was his philosophy, the whole man/boy love bit. This guy lived for little pink boy butt holes. So I wait a few months, and I go over to his house and I kick in the back door and I find him in bed with a bunch of lit candles and some child pornography, and he’s naked and probably pulling his rope, but he won’t never pull it again, ’cause I get hold of him and twisted his neck so far around ain’t nobody could sneak up on him from behind, provided he hadn’t died from it.
“So, Marvin Hanson, he’s a cop in Houston, and he figures it’s me right away. He didn’t have nothing on me, but he knew who I was and what I did, and he had a pretty good idea I’d do just what I done. So they found some fingerprints there, and though I had been careful, I was so mad, when I got hold of that fucker’s head and twisted it, the gloves I was wearing ripped, and I left a fingerprint on his neck. Can you believe that? On his fuckin’ neck?
“Lieutenant Hanson, he came to me at my house, and he has the evidence with him, and he says something like, ‘I don’t cotton to what you’re doin’, Tonto, and if this was some other thing, some other murder, I’d crawl so far up your ass every time you took a shit my life would play before your eyes instead of yours.’ And he took a match and he lit the evidence and he tossed it in the kitchen sink and leaned his back against it and looked at me. He said, ‘Got nothing for child molesters. Especially proud ones.’ And he started out, and I said, ‘Look here, man. You ever need anything, anything I can do, all you got to do is call and it’s done.’ And he said, ‘Not likely’ But the other day, I got the call. And here I am. I owe him. Got to tell you, it was a joy to twist that cocksucker’s head in my hands and hear his neck snap like a goddamn chicken bone. I liked the way he looked at me and the way he tried to yell when I twisted his goozle. Liked the way the light went out of his eyes. I’ve seen a fish on the dock do that. You catch him and he flops and he flops, and then slowly the eyes slick over. Only with this chicken fucker, it was quick. Real quick. I just wish he had been there to feel that rolled magazine I shoved up his ass. I couldn’t help myself. And I didn’t grease him none. Had he been alive, the paper cuts alone would have made him bleed out. Or so I like to think. Anyway, that’s who I am, and I ought not to have told any of that. Haven’t ever told anybody about it, and didn’t intend to ever, and it’s probably a mistake. But there it is, on my sixth beer and having sucked down four or five shots of Jack Daniel’s, and I’m with guys I like, and because there ain’t many guys I like, I’ve talked my ass off, and that’s the whole thing downloaded like a fuckin’ movie off the Internet.”
We all sat silently for a while.
Jim Bob said, “So, Tonto, you’ve had a fairly uneventful life, have you not?”
Tonto slowly grinned.
34
I was in my bed and Leonard was coming out of the bathroom buttoning up his pajama top. It was an ugly set of pajamas. White cloth with anchors on it; matching shirt and pants. No footsies.
“So,” I said, “where did the pajamas come from?”
“John.”
“Were they a gag gift?”
“No.”
“He think you’re a sailor?”
“No. He thought they were cute.”
“Trust me,” I said. “They aren’t cute.”
“I have a little red teddy I could wear, you prefer.”
“Most definitely not… you don’t, do you?”
“Now what do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think about much of anything anymore. I was actually thinking about Brett. And I was thinking about that story Tonto told us.”
“You believe it?”
“I do.”
“Me too. Do you think he can bend a tire iron?”