Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (24 page)

To hell with going to Jane’s to study for the history test
, she thinks.
I could go to fucking jail
, he thinks.

9.

Sergeant Earl Petty, Texas Rangers, Company “F,” Waco, Texas, considers the coating of dust on his black cowboy boots. Taking a monogrammed handkerchief from his back pocket, he leans down and buffs until the spit shine returns.

The dust is from the walk down the embankment and back to get a last look at the remains of Sergeant Bill Cody, ditto. More like a napalm atrocity than a dead Texas Ranger.

When Earl turns at the thud of a car door closing, Lieutenant Giles Truluck shambles toward him. Weather-stained Stetson, cowboy shirt with pearl buttons and a bolo tie, black pants and cowboy boots. Two wood-handled .32 caliber Smith & Wesson revolvers are holstered at his hips.

“At least his wife’s run out on him and his kids are grown up,” the Lieutenant says, grasping Earl in a hug.

Earl extricates himself and blows a wad of spit between his front teeth.

“Highway Patrol got here first. Driver of the semi…” He flicks his head to where it’s parked a little way up the highway. “Says Bill’s truck suddenly just lost control. Driver didn’t see the RV go over cause he was tryin’ like hell not to flip himself.”

“At least it was quick.”

“Bein’ burnt to a crisp can’t be much fun.”

The Lieutenant looks up at the vast blue sky, his eyes glisten. He’s at a loss for words. Then:

“Think it might rain?”

“No way, José.”

The line of vehicles passing on the left have slowed to 30 m.p.h., looking for blood or a zipped body bag.

“Here’s the odd part,” Earl says. “Truck driver thought he saw someone walk away from Bill’s pick-up just after it went up in flames.”

10.

Zeke walks up Main Street until he comes to the empty parking slot where the Bronco had been. On the glass storefront opposite it reads: Brian Beetle Attorney at Law. A black velvet curtain blocks any view into the interior. He thinks about going inside, making an appointment. Then just walking past the secretary and shooting the guy at point blank range as he sits behind his desk.

Christ!
Zeke freaks.
What’s the matter with you? It’s all in your head, jerk-off.

But he can’t let it go.

At the far end of the Bockman Block, Zeke steps from bright mid-afternoon sun through the door of Carl’s Tap. Inside, it’s dark and beery. An ancient air-conditioning unit wheezes in the background. The Tap is barely cooler than outside.

A bar runs the length of the long narrow room. There are no tables. A stuffed chihuahua with a sneer on his lips sits on top of the cash register near the front door. The chihuahua’s name is Carl. John, the owner, nods.

“Shiner,” says Zeke.

“No way, José. Barrel’s empty. It’s either Budweiser or Bud Light. And I guess I know the answer to that one.”

John draws a pint of Budweiser and sets it in front of Zeke. There’re four other guys drinking in the Tap at three in the afternoon on a Thursday. Zeke knows all of them.

Defoeville, it goes without saying, is a small pond.

“Hey, Wendell.” Zeke nods to the man standing next to him. “How’s it goin’?”

Wendell nods back. “Doin’ okay.”

“Got a cigarette.”

Wendell pulls a pack of generic smokes from his shirt pocket and shakes one loose. John provides a match. Zeke blows a cloud of tobacco smoke toward the ceiling. It tastes like burning shit. He read somewhere they use dried shit in India for cooking fires. He stubs the cigarette in an ashtray bearing the likeness of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Give me a shot of Jameson,” Zeke says.

“If you weren’t gonna smoke it, what’dja take it for?”

“Wendell, you’re an asshole.”

Wendell roils forward like a tsunami, an out-of-work nobody who’s been looking for an excuse for a fight all afternoon.

Zeke hits him straight in the stomach and twice across the jaw. Wendell shakes his head, trying to break free of the blows. His hand goes for the pocket of his pants.

“Look out!” yells John. “The SOB’s got a razor.”

Zeke knees Wendell in the nads. He crumples like an old wrinkled shirt. On the way down his chin meets Zeke’s upwardly mobile steel-toed boot, and his head nearly flies in the other direction. A tooth comes loose and rattles like a sex-crazed June bug against the cheap wood paneling.

“Sombitch been lookin’ for trouble since he got here,” John says.

“I’m in the same boat,” Zeke says.

A fellow drinker with a clerical collar pipes up: “Is he dead?”

“Not even close,” John says.

“Then he won’t be needing absolution.”

Hands under Wendell’s shoulders, John starts to drag him toward the back of the bar. He glances up at the patrons: “Well, don’t just stand there...”

The priest and another man each take a leg and in no time Wendell is history. Zeke throws a five on the bar and goes out the way he came in.

11.

A day earlier, down the road a piece at the Piney Woods State Facility for the Criminally Insane, an in-patient named Maurice A. Vende hides in the false bottom of a laundry cart and is pushed to freedom. His escape isn’t discovered for twelve hours. By then it’s too late.

“Shouldn’t we notify Austin?” Dr. Jatarji, the Assistant Director, asks.

“No way, José,” the Director replies. “M. A. Vende killed and ate his parents, three siblings, four neighbors and a cat before he was caught. I’m not going to ruin the golden years of my career trying to explain to a bunch of Austin bureaucrats how he got loose. Maurice never existed.”

The Director picks up M. A. Vende’s file and starts feeding the pages into a heavy-duty paper shredder. Dr. Jatarji, suddenly afflicted with a massive headache, flees back to his office where, drawing the blinds, he sits in semi-darkness doing deep breathing exercises.

12.

Gravel crunches like granola beneath Sheriff Sonny Troop’s boot soles, as he rocks back and forth, like a Jew at the Wailing Wall, on the narrow shoulder of the road. He’s six-five, with a face as stiff as a gale-force wind.

“What’cha got,
chico
?”

Deputy Ned Ritter taps his hand nervously against his trouser leg. His eyes are blue and hardboiled. His nose bulbous and misshapen. His sunken cheeks pocked with old acne scars.

“Le Baron in the ditch with a broken axel.”

“I can see that. Tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”

A smirk plays across Ritter’s face like a late night rerun.

“License number’s the same as that APB out of Dallas. Murder suspects, armed and dangerous.”

“Damn, boy! You know how to get the blood goin’.” The Sheriff purses his lips. “Where do ya think they’re at?”

“No blood in the car. Engine’s cold. Hard to say how far they’ve gone. Mighta even caught a ride. I thank we oughta call the state troopers.”

“No fuckin way, José, am I lettin’ some buzz-cut state boys in mirrored shades take the photo op for bringin’ in these asswipes. Are we on the same page, Ritter!?”

“Seems like a high risk situation, sir.” Ritter picks up a handful of gravel and starts pinging it off the Le Baron’s fender.

“Ritter! Don’t go turnin’ into some pissant pansy on me, now.”

Sheriff Troop pulls out his .357 pistol and fires off a single shot, shattering the front window of the Le Baron. Ritter, his face bright red, looks up at the endless blue sky.

“We’ll play it however you want, Sonny,” he says without conviction.

“Okay then. Let’s assume these bad guys went toward Defoeville. We’ll start lookin’ in that direction.”

They head back to their respective vehicles.

“Hey, Ritter. Better take the safety off your weapon,” the Sheriff calls out. He slams the door of his Crown Vic and runs the wipers to clean the dust off the windshield. A dashboard indicator tells him he’s low on washer fluid.

As the Sheriff peels out, Ritter, sitting in his Impala with the door open and one booted foot still on the ground, flips open his cell and dials. At least I can get some Dallas cops in on this, he thinks. He knows Dietz from a police workshop two years before.

After some bleeps and sizzle noises, a voice breaks through the static:

“Dietz here.”

13.

Maud Floodway runs her fingers up and down Bates’ black-trousered thigh. The outline of his circumcised thingamajig throbs against the cheap fabric. His forehead and armpits are awash in sweat. He can hardly breathe, let alone drive the car. But he keeps going.

This is crazy, he thinks. Looney-tunes.

On the main streets he tells her to slump down in her seat, so she’s invisible from the sidewalk. Soon enough they cut through a riprap of back streets in the black section of town, past rattrap cottages and shotgun shacks.

Passing a gas station with rap music blaring from a pair of speakers, Maud says:

“Let’s get some potato chips and beer.”

“No way, José” is Bates’ reply.

She pouts and gives him the finger. He guns the engine. The car spins, almost, but not quite, out of control.

They turn down a narrow blacktop road. Maud’s is the last house before the road meanders off into the countryside. It’s a rambling two-story job, with a Dutch colonial feel and a
porte cochere
. Her father’s inheritance. The stucco is gray and weathered, the wood trim rife with dry rot. The windows are blind eyes.

“My mom doesn’t get home before 4:30,” volunteers Maud.

“Risky,” Bates says. His watch says 2:45. Somehow he knows that today Lydia Floodway will come home at three.

Then Maud puts her hand on his penis and all is lost.

He parks his Chevy Malibu on the verge; they hurry up the driveway like a pair of burglars. Maud finds the key under the backdoor doormat.

Inside, Bates surveys the kitchen, as if expecting a plague of paparazzi to burst from all sides, cameras flashing. But it’s just a worn old kitchen, linoleum curling at the edges, cabinets painted so many times it’s like another dimension.

Maud comes up behind him.

“Boo!”

Bates: “I don’t think I should…” Maud fiercely smooshes her lips against his, forestalling further laments. Her tongue in his mouth recalls the fingers of the dental hygienist he goes to twice a year. Déjà vu.

Maud: “Let’s go up to my parent’s room.”

Bates wants to scream:
Are you out of your fucking mind!?
Instead he lets her lead him through a dark mold-smelling hallway and up a steep stairway that squeaks at each step like a riot of rats.

Maud’s parents’ bedroom is about half an acre big. There’s a stone fireplace at one end and a vast white-sheeted, maple four-poster. Maud slips behind Bates and closes the door, the ancient latch making a loud metallic click like a gunshot.

14.

A stand of bamboo lines one side of the road. From within it comes a sudden rustling, snapping and swaying. Warren Jolene goes into attack mode, legs apart in a front to back V, chest slightly forward. He holds the old lady’s .22 caliber Saturday night special in front of him like a dousing wand.

“Who the fuck’s there!”

A gaunt gray-skinned man in hospital scrubs emerges from the bamboo thicket and commences dancing to some internal tune. He’s barefoot. Rivulets of blood run from hand and foot wounds, where he’s scrambled through brambles and hedgerows.

“Stop that and answer my question. Who the fuck are you?” demands Warren.

“Looks like a nut case,” Ray says. “Somebody around here keeps him in the attic. They musta forgot to turn the latch.”

“Maybe I should put him out of his misery.”

“No way, José. It’s bad luck.”

“And we already got enough a that, right?” For a moment Warren thinks about shooting Ray right between the eyes. Instead he says:

“But he might tell someone he saw us.”

“Who’s gonna believe a Goddamn goofball?”

“You mean screwball.”

“Whatever.”

Ray scratches his chin.

“Let’s go,” he says, and starts trudging up the road.

Warren turns back to the nut case: “You never saw us. Got that?”

M. A. Vende rolls his eyes up into his head until only the whites show. “I can be very discreet,” he says.

“Yeah, right.”

Warren hurries after his brother who’s disappearing around a curve in the road. Through the trees he can see a water tower in the distance. That must be Defoeville.

After a few strides Warren catches movement in the corner of his eye and whirls around. M. A. Vende, a half dozen steps behind, teeters along the edge of the tarmac, carefully placing one foot in front the other like a tightrope walker. His wide-flung arms flap up and down for balance.

“Don’t be following us, now,” Warren says in a stern voice.

M. A. Vende’s flipped-out eyes glide up to meet Warren’s. “Yes sir, no sir. I won’t get any closer,” he singsongs.

Warren, though he’s a murderer several times over, can’t look into those eyes for more than a few seconds. He turns away and starts moving in a light jog to catch up with Ray.

Maurice drops back, following them like an anorexic coyote hoping for scraps. Or a Lecter lite looking for a wet work opportunity.

15.

“Wadaya mean, the house is on fire! No fuckin’ way, José.” Mason Barrow screams into his cell phone. He glances over at Alberto. “Hold on a second,” he says into the phone.

He swerves his truck into a gas station and shimmies to a stop.

“Sorry buddy,” he says. “I’ve got to drop ya here. My old lady’s burnin’ down the house. I gotta get back home.”

He leans across Alberto to unlatch the passenger door. It sways open and Mason urges the hitchhiker to climb out.
Vamonos
.

Alberto stands in one of the gas portals watching the disappearing license plate of the pick-up amid a blast of burning oil. Behind him the pounding rant of gangsta rap explodes from loudspeakers mounted over the door of the cashier shack and mini-mart. Its hypnotic beat is not that distant from the
imam’s
chanting of the daily prayers.