Cold in July (18 page)

The Mexican just looked at him. He was wearing a
tight-fitting, blue Hawaiian shirt with yellow and red palm trees on it He had
on yellow slacks and big, black wing tips with olive explosions on the toes. He
was nearly seven feet tall and his chest was like a beer barrel.

“You talk to me?” he asked.

“No, fucking Chili lips, I’m talking to the goddamn Nova. It
looks the smarter of you two. Did you see what you done to my car there? Fucked
the paint job. Look at that”

Jim Bob turned to point and the big Mexican (a.k.a. Frito and
Chili Lips) stepped forward and grabbed the brim of Jim Bob’s hat and pulled it
down so hard Jim Bob went to his knees. Then the Mexican kneed Jim Bob in the
face sharply.

“We ought to help him,” I said.

“Shit,” Russel said. “Look at the size of that guy.”

The Mexican had Jim Bob by the back of the neck now and the
seat of the pants and was using him to punch the door on the Nova.

“Too far,” I said, and got out of the car. On the street
side, I stood and yelled over the top of it. “Hey. Quit that.”

The Mexican looked at me like I was crazy, then went back to
jamming Jim Bob’s head into the Nova.

I went around the car, not real fast. “Now that’s enough of
that,” I said. “Quit.”

The Mexican dropped Jim Bob on the drive and said, “Okay.
You do.” Then he said something in Spanish. It was brief and as menacing as his
English.

I didn’t run. I stood there.

Had too. My feet were glued to the ground. Seeing him come
toward me was akin to watching some natural phenomenon, like an eclipse. He was
almost on me. I put up my fists. Not that I thought I’d get to use them much. I
just hoped it was short and painless.

Russel opened the door of the Bitch and got out. I didn’t
see him, but I heard him. At the same time Jim Bob got up. He had a look on his
face that was more embarrassed than peeved.

“Say, you want to try that again, Taco Ass,” Jim Bob said,
“only with me looking this time?”

The Mexican turned to look at Jim Bob and Jim Bob said
something in Spanish and waved Russel away with a hand. “Just me and him.”

I backed away and to the side. I could see the Mexican’s
face that way. He was smiling. It was a nice smile, like the kind sharks must
get before they go for the dangling leg of a swimmer.

Then Jim Bob moved. He sort of skipped sideways and his
right leg folded up and his foot shot out, and the heel of his boot took the
Mexican in the balls, the leg half-folded and the foot shot down and hit the
Mexican in the knee.

The Mexican screamed. Jim Bob’s foot whipped up again, and
his leg went high and arched back and his heel hit the man behind the temple
with a crack like a wooden ruler being snapped.

The man fell down and didn’t get up.

“Shit,” I said. “He isn’t dead is he?”

“Hell no,” Jim Bob said. “I ain’t wanting to hurt the
shithead any worse than a beating. He ought to watch where he’s backing.”

Jim Bob found his hat and put it on and winced. “Owww. Man,
he was trying to put me through that door… Thanks for wanting to help, Dane.
And fuck you, Ben.”

“I sure hated to see you whip that bastard,” Russel said.

Russel went over and rolled the Mexican on his stomach and
got a wallet out of his back pocket and opened it and looked for
identification. He read what he found and put the wallet back. He said,
“There’s a little sap in his back pocket too. Be glad he didn’t take that out.”

“I am,” Jim Bob said. “That identification didn’t say he was
called Fred Miller, did it?”

“No, smart ass, it didn’t,” Russel said.

Jim Bob walked up to the house and rang the doorbell. Russel
shook out a cigarette and stood with it unlit between his lips, watching the
door. No one opened it. Jim Bob knocked. Still no one opened it.

Jim Bob came back and went over to look at where the back of
the Nova was pressed against the Bitch. “You look at that? My fucking rear door
is totaled.”

“Get the license plate number if you want to fuck with
insurance,” Russel said.

“After I kicked his ass?” Jim Bob said. “No thanks. I might
have to kick it again, and I’m not sure I can. Shit, look at that.”

He walked over to the Mexican and grabbed the man’s pants
leg and pulled it up a little bit, revealing a small holster with a small
revolver.

“I’m glad he wasn’t in no O.K. Corral mood,” Jim Bob said.

“Let’s go,” Russel said, “neighbors might have seen us.”

Jim Bob went back and looked at his car. “Damn.” Then he
glanced at the Nova. The trunk hood was bent up and knocked open. Jim Bob
looked inside. “A movie lover,” he said.

I went over and looked. There was a small box of videotapes.
They had little stickers on their spines and the names of movies written on them.
Some of the movies were Mexican, some were English and American. One of them
read Star Wars. Jim Bob reached that one out of the box, held it up.

“I’ll just call the beating I gave that sumbitch and this
here my insurance settlement. Ain’t enough, but it’ll do.”

We got in the car and Jim Bob drove us out of there.

30

We had some hamburgers and fries at a McDonald’s and sat in
a back booth and considered things. There was a lot to consider.

“Well, as the little ole lady asked,” Jim Bob said, “what
the fuck does it all mean? Who was that big Meskin and what was he doing
backing out of Freddy’s garage late afternoon with a trunkload of videotapes,
and is he evidence that you can still buy driver’s licenses at Sears?”

“Maybe your detecting is off, and that isn’t Fred Miller’s
house,” Russel said.

“That’s his house, and you know it,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t
fuck up that bad.”

“It doesn’t seem that mysterious to me,” I said. “Freddy has
a friend who’s Mexican, and the guy has run of the house and he was over there
for whatever reason and he just happened to have his movie collection in the
trunk of his car. Maybe he shares the place with Freddy. Could be a way to meet
the bills or something.”

“When you get right down to it,” Jim Bob said, “it don’t
matter. What matters is that our friend, Ben, here, ought to just call Freddy
up and get it over with.”

“I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Russel said.

“You’re not going to feel any more comfortable about it
tomorrow,” Jim Bob said.

“Maybe not,” Russel said, “but I’ll know when I’m ready.”

“He’ll know,” Jim Bob said. “You get that, Dane? He'll know.
Shit.”

We went on back to Jim Bob’s place, and Russel didn’t talk
much. For that matter, neither did Jim Bob, and I wasn’t chatty myself. Jim Bob
tuned in a country and Western station and sang along with the songs a little,
and damned if he wasn’t pretty good.

At Jim Bob’s house, Russel went to take a bath and Jim Bob
got us both a beer and I sat on the couch and Jim Bob took a chair next to the
television.

“I don’t know about you, pardner,” Jim Bob said, “but I’m so
bored I could sing to my dick.”

I was trying to visualize that, and having some trouble,
when Jim Bob said, “Hey, let’s watch that damn movie. Star Wars.”

“It’s good,” I said. “But it looks better on the big
screen.”

“Get me a big screen and we’ll play it on that,” Jim Bob
said. “But in the meantime, I’m gonna play it on that nineteen-inch RCA there.
You don’t mind me watching it do you?”

“No. I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.”

“Good, cause I was gonna watch it anyway.”

Jim Bob had left the video out in the Bitch and he went
through the garage and got it. When, he came back he had a dark scowl on his
face. “Man, that Nova screwed the Bitch good. I’m gonna call a man I know about
getting it fixed tomorrow.”

Jim Bob went over and slipped the cassette into the VCR and
turned it and the television on. “I got some popcorn,” he said. “I could fix us
some.”

“I could always eat popcorn,” I said.

The video crackled and popped and there were ripples. Jim Bob
started to get up to make the popcorn, but he hesitated. “Looks like a bad
copy.”

“You'll want to turn it off to make the corn anyway,” I
said. “This stuff with the big spaceship at the first is pretty fine.”

But there were no credits and no Stars Wars. There was bad
video camera work with a young Mexican girl sitting on a bed with her hands and
feet tied.

“What the hell’s this? This ain’t Star Wars is it?”

“No,” I said. “It looks like some sort of cheap porno tape.”

Then the big Mexican Jim Bob had fought stepped into the
camera’s eye. He was naked and sexually ready and looked even bigger without
his clothes.

“Shit,” Jim Bob said, ” b said, home movies of the Mex and
his old lady.”

The Mexican went over to the girl and pushed her back on the
bed and undid the binding at her feet and spread her legs and got on top of
her. The girl didn’t fight.

She was very complacent. Only her eyes suggested she didn’t
like what was happening.

The Mexican didn’t waste any time, and when he finished he
stood up by the bed and another man stepped into view. He was naked too. He was
a head shorter than the Mexican and not nearly so wide and sporting a little
paunch, but he still looked powerful. The camera angle switched then and we got
a closer look at his face. He had thinning, blond hair and blue eyes and nice
teeth and he was showing all of them. The camera went back to its original
side-view angle and the blond man got on the girl and did what the Mexican had
done. When he was finished he grabbed the girl by the hair and pulled her to a
sitting position on the edge of the bed and she let out a little squeak like a
mouse with a brick on its tail. The blond man put out his hand and a hand off
camera put a little revolver in it. The girl understood suddenly what was going
to happen and she tried to lift her bound hands to her face but the man with
the gun was too quick and he shot her in the forehead. Blood leaped out the
back of her head and went all over the bed and she fell back in it with her
arms out, kicked briefly with one leg like she was jump starting a motorcycle
and wet herself. The urine pooled under her and blended with the blood and her
left eye rolled up in her head and her right stayed fixed as if it had
discovered something unique on the ceiling. The camera went close on her face
and the hole in her head was tiny as the width of a dime with a bead of blood
pushing out of it. The blond man’s face came into view and he licked the bead
away and rolled it around in his mouth as if tasting wine.

Static replaced the picture. Jim Bob reached out and cut the
video off. He turned to me and his voice was hoarse. “That was for real. An
honest to God snuff film.”

“He’s older, heavier, and losing some hair,” I said “but he
still looks like his photograph, and when he took the gun—”

“The moles on the back of his hand were shaped like a
four-leaf clover.”

31

“Don’t say anything to Ben,” Jim Bob said. “Not yet.”

He got the cassette out of the machine and turned off the
television. He went over to the bar in the kitchen and got a pen and paper and
wrote a note.

“I’m telling Ben we’ve gone to town for some beer,” Jim Bob
said. “You and me got to talk.”

He put the note on the table and took the cassette with him
out to the garage. We got in his black Dodge pickup instead of the Bitch. We
backed out and drove along through the night with the cassette lying between us
like a bomb. We didn’t talk for a time.

“Maybe it wasn’t real,” I said. “It could have just looked
real. They can do anything now.”

“It’s okay to be hopeful, Dane,” Jim Bob said, “but there’s
no use in being stupid. It was real.”

We drove on in silence until I said what{ we were both
wondering. “What about Russel?”

“Poor bastard can’t get a break, can he?” Jim Bob said. “It
isn’t like he hasn’t gone through hell. And now this. Ain’t nothing could be
worse than having your kid get killed, unless it was finding out he wasn’t a
human being.”

“What’s it all about, though? Why would he do that?”

“You’re having a stupid attack again. Freddy enjoys it. Did
you see his face? You don’t lick blood out of a gunshot wound unless you enjoy
it. And I bet he’s gone into the movie business kind of regular. Stars himself
and the Mex and some little gal that won’t be missed much. My guess is he
brought her from across the border somehow. Smuggled her over. Some whore he
paid, told her he was going to take her to a big party, and all she had to do
to make an extra couple thousand was fuck a few of his friends. Only it was
rougher than that. Christ, how old was that gal, Dane?”

“I don’t know. Fifteen?”

“Yeah. That’s about what I figure. I bet that ain’t the
first gal he’s aced or the last. Tapes like that he can sell to the sicko trade
for big bucks and be reasonably safe about it. Them ain’t the kind of films the
owners invite the neighbors over to see. That crap is for sick shits to sit in
the dark and jack off to.”

“Jesus, people would pay to see that shit?”

“Live in the real world, buddy. There’s people who’ll pay to
see anything. Buy tapes of girls shitting in each other’s faces, dogs fucking
them in the ass, or just what you saw. We ain’t talking stuff for an Elks
smoker here. I heard of a rich man once on the other side of Houston that
bought tapes of operations, animal experiments and war atrocities, and he could
do that legal. I wouldn’t doubt he’s got some stuff like we saw on this here,”
he touched the tape with a finger as if poking a monster to see if it were
dead, “in a vault somewhere. Maybe that’s how he gets it up so he can fuck the
old lady. He can pretend he’s gonna shoot her after he gets off—”