Cold in July by Joe R. Lansdale
“Not the way the feds see it. Isn’t that they don’t want to nail the bastard, but they see leaving him alone—at least for now—as the lesser of two evils. Least that’s my informer’s theory on things. He doesn’t know the particular case, but he’s known others like it. You see, the FBI fixed it for Freddy to be dead, then told him he was safe as a tick in a bear’s ass. And though they wouldn’t mind coming down on him with both feet and hitting him so hard shit flies out at both ends, they’ve got their rep to protect.”
“Their rep?”
“You see, they did it so it looked like Freddy got himself killed, doing something stupid like burglary. But if it floats to the top that they actually hid his ass, and couldn’t keep it hid, other would-be squealers are gonna think it’s all an FBI setup. That you don’t really get protected at all. You squeal, they go through the motions of giving you a new identity, then bam, they nab you. Maybe on a bum charge later.”
“But who would know? He’s supposed to be dead.”
“No one maybe. But if they bring him in, and the charges start, maybe everyone. They can’t take the chance. Once he’s arrested or killed, it would be hard to keep who he is a secret a second time. They might be able to do it, but maybe not.”
“All right, they hurt a few informers’ feelings. So what?”
“Then next time the feds want to snag them a big bunch of bad guys at the expense of saving one of them, and they’ve got someone who’s thinking of squealing, the squealer might have second thoughts.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “This is still the United States of America. You just don’t let a scumbag like that go.”
“Would you like me to give you a flag to wave, or do you just want to sing the national anthem?”
“Bullshit,” I said again, only this time more heartfelt.
“Hush,” Jim Bob said, “you’ll wake up Ben.”
“All right,” I said, “what if the FBI or someone tips off the Dixie Mafia as toe Mafia where this guy who double-crossed them is hiding? Wouldn’t it be okay if they did the job for the FBI?”
“Then it would look like the FBI can’t hide the people they’re trying to hide so good.”
“They can’t. We found him.”
“I found him. And I have a contact. And for the most part, my contact knows I’m one of the good guys.”
“Couldn’t they have inside help too—the Dixie Mafia?”
“Yeah, they could. But I figure if they did they’d already have gotten Freddy. No, I think he’s made a clean getaway. And there’s another thing. Freddy is most likely killing Mex gals, not Americans. It’s not our people dying.”
“But they’re dying here, in America. Texas, goddamnit.”
“Yeah, and it’s a crime no matter how you look at it, but the FBI is letting it ride for now. In time they’ll take care of him. But it’s too soon now.”
“What’s in time?”
“I don’t know. A year maybe. That way they could fix it so it looks like an accident or something. But if anything happens now, it makes the FBI look bad.”
“This is nuts. The FBI doesn’t want to look bad, so they’re letting this psycho kill women and make videos of it?”
“They’re looking at the big picture, and we’re looking at the smaller picture.”
“Ask those dead women how small the picture is.”
“I’m not saying I agree with them, Dane, I’m just saying how it is. Look at it like this. The FBI was willing to let you think you killed Freddy Russel to give him a new identity, and they didn’t even give you an inkling what was going on. Not even when Ben out there went bug-fuck nutty and came after you. Think of all the grief they caused him. Hell, made him insane. The local cops helped out. I mean the law is like that. They stick together, right or wrong. You wash my dick, I’ll wash your dick. The world don’t work like Dragnet or Adam 12. Not when you get down to die dog or eat the hatchet.”
“Either the world is getting more complicated, or I’m just now starting to see things as they are.”
“A little of both.”
“This connection with the FBI, he didn’t have anything else to say?”
“He said my favors with his dad were all used up.”
“That’s it? No suggestions?”
“Just one. And I didn’t like it much.”
“Well?”
“He said we could take care of the bastard ourselves.”
33
We talked a while longer and decided on nothing. All the choices sucked. Jim Bob finally gave it up and went upstairs to try and sleep some. I tried to go back to sleep, but lay there looking at the ceiling. I thought about how nuts things were. About how just a little while ago I was a pretty happy guy who was unsure of just a few things, and a little worried about what kind of father I was. And how now I was a very unhappy guy unsure of many things, and even more concerned about what kind of father I was, because nothing in the world looked easy or sure, and everything in the world had to do with being a father. Everything.
I lay there thinking about Russel out there, sleeping now, not knowing what we knew, trying to find some courage in his heart to go and talk to his only son and tell him he loved him.
“Hi, son, I love you.”
“Hi, dad. I make movies. I kill girls and get it on video.”
It was all very sick and very sad, and it made me think my dad had seen something in the world I hadn’t seen, shadows perhaps, those waltzing shadows Russel had talked about, and the shadows were not something he could live with, so he had taken a gun and put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger and sent the shadows away. He didn’t have to face them anymore. All his troubles had gone bye-bye. He didn’t have to worry about his honor. About being a coward. The nature of the universe. The price of beer and peanuts and where this month’s rent or house payment was coming from.
Across all the years of my life I had dreamed of many things. Of toys and then bigger toys and a woman to love and a houseful of kids and a life like Father Knows Best, and maybe to be rich and respected and to have plenty of time on my hands and to like that time. But here I was with just a few hours before morning, and they were horrid hours, and it was as if I had more time than ever these days, and so much of it was there to kill, not to enjoy, and that thought depressed me more. And on the other side of those hours were more hours and I had a fear that after the next few days there would be even longer hours full of those goddamn waltzing shadows.
I told myself I wouldn’t sleep, and to hell with it.
But finally I closed my eyes and it was morning, and I got up and put on my clothes and went into the living room.
Russel was at the table, drinking coffee, and Jim Bob was standing over in the kitchen looking out the window at the pig house or the garden or nothing at all. He heard me come in and turned and looked at me. Neither of us could hold the other’s eyes. I walked over and got a cup and poured some coffee.
Russel turned around and looked at us. “What’s with you fellas? Don’t bull me, something’s up. It’s Freddy, isn’t it? You know something you haven’t told me.”
“I think I fucked up,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t think this Fred Miller is him after all. I’ve just been thinking how to tell you, but I don’t know how. I don’t have any more idea where Freddy is than a goose.”
Russel didn’t quit staring at us. He pursed his lips and sighed, said, “You’re lying to me, Jim Bob.”
“Wish I were,” Jim Bob said. “It’s embarrassing to be wrong, and I hate it for you, but—”
“How do you suddenly know you’re wrong?”
“The Mexican at the house.”
“You could have come up with better than that,” Russel said. “That doesn’t mean a thing. That guy wasn’t Fred Miller. He was a Mexican, like you said. I read a Mexican name off the inside of his wallet.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Tell me,” Russel said. “Even when I said you might have screwed up earlier, I didn’t r
I wanted a smooth lie to come out, but nothing did. I just stood there holding my cup of coffee, not quite looking at Russel.
“If he’s dead, tell me. The worse thing that could happen to me is not to know what’s happened to him. You know something, I want to know it.”
“All right,” Jim Bob said. “But there’s worse things than being dead.”
“Just tell me.”
Jim Bob put his coffee cup down and went out of the room and came back with the video. He held it out from him, as if it could bite. He went over to the television and turned it on and put the cassette in the machine.
“What are you doing?” Russel said. “We’re talking about Freddy. I don’t want to see a movie.”
“This will answer your questions,” Jim Bob said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Dane, come on.”
He turned on the machine and started walking toward the front door. I went after him, carrying my coffee cup with me.
“Hey,” Russel said.
“The answer’s on the cassette,” I said.
Jim Bob and I went outside. We stood around on the front lawn looking out at the blacktop, neither of us saying anything.
There was an oak in the yard near the road, and I focused my attention on a blackbird in that. It kept hopping from one limb to another, working itself down. It looked weak and sick. It was missing a lot of feathers. Maybe someone had taken a shot at it.
An old pickup rattled by and the old black man driving it waved at us and we waved back.
I looked back to the oak and my bird, but it had flown, or maybe gotten behind some of the thicker branches.
I looked at my watch but didn’t really notice the time.
I finished off my coffee and let the cup dangle from my finger like an oversized ring.
It was starting to get hot already, and the coffee I had drunk and my nerves weren’t helping matters. My shirt felt sticky beneath my arms.
The front door opened.
Russel came out walking very fast. He went directly toward Jim Bob.
“Ben,” Jim Bob said.
Ben looped the punch. It wasn’t one of his wise ones. It was worse than the kind he’d told me not to throw. It caught the wind and made it whistle. Jim Bob could have ducked it. Hell, he could have walked to town and caught a bus before it came around.
But he didn’t. He closed his eyes the moment before impact and Russel’s fist caught him just above the ear and staggered him. Then Ben’s other first came around and hit Jim Bob on the side of the jaw and Jim Bob fell to his knees.
Russel turned on me, cocked back his hand. I just stood there and let him come. Like Jim Bob, I wanted to take it. Cleanse myself with pain.
But he didn’t hit me. The steam had gone out of him. He dropped his hand and staggered. I caught him and he hung onto me and hugged me and started to cry and call me a sonofabitch. He heaved so hard I thought his chest would crack my sternum. “It was him, wasn’t it?” he said. “It was really Freddy, wasn’t it?”
“It was him,” I said.
“You sonofabitches. Both you sonofabitches.”
Jim Bob came over and put his arms around both of us.
“I’m sorry, Ben,” Jim Bob said. “I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been.”
“Jesus, Jesus,” Russel said. “My son, my son.”
He melted down then, and I got his shoulders and Jim Bob got his feet and we carried him inside and put him on the couch. The television was still on and the tape was still playing, but there wasn’t any picture, just static. I cut off the machine and turned off the television. Jim Bob sat on the couch with Russel and held his hand like a little boy.
I went back outside and saw that I had dropped my coffee cup in the grass. I picked it up and went over to the oak and leaned on it, trying to draw some strength from the big old thing, but it wasn’t working. I felt weaker than ever.
When I looked down, I saw what had become of my blackbird. It lay dead next to the trunk of the oak, its beak open as if the fall had taken it by surprise.
34
While Russel lay in a sort of stupor on the couch and Jim Bob sat by him, I got a beer and went out back and walked down to the hog house. Raoul, a stringy man with oversized clothes and a straw hat that looked as if it had gone through a fan, was there. I had seen him from a distance a couple of times, but had never spoken to him. He would come and go like a ghost, leaving garden and hogs attended to.
I went out there and found a lawn chair by the hog house and watched Raoul go about his paces of turning on the irrigation system Jim Bob had devised, and then going into the hog house to do whatever he did there.
He looked at me suspiciously a few times, but if he thought I didn’t belong, he kept it to himself. When he was finished, he gave ƀ8me a kind of shy wave, and I waved back. He got in a pickup with one door tied on with baling wire and drove off leaving at least a quart of K-Mart’s cheapest oil transformed into a dark, poisonous cloud behind him.
I sat there with an empty beer bottle and blew air into it, trying to strike up a jug band tune without any success. A blue bottle fly big enough to need air clearance flew around my head a few times and I swatted at him with the bottle, but he got away. He was big, but quick. I finally quit blowing in the bottle and the fly didn’t come back. It was getting hot. I felt paralyzed. Sweat ran down my face and into my collar. I wondered what the weather was like on Maui.
Then Jim Bob called to me, “Come on in the house, Dane.”
I didn’t want to, but I did. When I stepped inside, Russel was at the table and he had a bottle of Jim Beam, and a little glass. I hadn’t seen the whiskey before, and figured Jim Bob had brought it out. Russel looked at me and tried to smile, but the muscles in his mouth weren’t cooperating.
“Ben wants to say something,” Jim Bob said. “Sit down, would you?”
I went over to the couch and sat. Jim Bob poured some of the Jim Beam in a little glass and brought it over to me. I hated the stuff, but I sipped at it anyway. I would have drunk cherry dog piss right then. I felt as if I had been hit with a mallet. It could have been the beer on an empty stomach, and it could have been poor Russel or the video. All those things most likely.
“Freddy,” Russel said in an uncharacteristically low voice, “is out of control. An understatement. He’s off the end. He’s my son, and I feel responsible.”
“You’re not responsible,” I said.
“Shut up… please,” Russel said. “I feel responsible. He’s flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, and all that shit. But he’s no good. There’s nothing about that boy worth saving. He’s not a petty criminal, he’s the dredge at the bottom of the sewer.”
A tear ran out of Russel’s right eye and went down his face quick as a bullet and gathered in the bristle of whiskers on his cheek. He tossed off his whiskey and poured himself another.
I looked at Jim Bob. He looked very old. He was leaning against the bar holding a glass of whiskey and he was looking at Russel, and he looked like he might cry at any moment.
I drank some of my whiskey. I wished I hadn’t. It was hot and nasty, but I sipped it again. It was something to keep my hands from flying around.
“I think when a man has lost the things that make him a man,” Russel said. “Then he doesn’t need to live. Jim Bob says the law would be reluctant to do it. I don’t understand that. I’m a goddamn thief and I don’t understand that. If the law won’t do it, I have to.”
“You can’t do that,” I said. “He’s your son.”
“That’s why I have to do it. I brought him into this world, and now, I have to take him out of it. It’s the only thing I can do for him
“You could hire someone,” I said
“No,” Russel said.
“I offered to do it,” Jim Bob said.
“No, I’ve got to do this thing.”
“You do,” I said, “and you won’t be able to live with yourself.”
“I can’t live with myself now. Not knowing this.”
We sat there in silence and sipped our whiskey. A clock ticked somewhere and there was a hum I hadn’t noticed before. Probably the refrigerator.
“What is it you want to do, Ben?” Jim Bob said. “I mean, how?”
“I don’t know yet,” Russel said. “Just walk up and do it, I guess.”
“There’s the big Mex,” Jim Bob said, “he might be with Freddy.”
“I guess I’ll shoot him too,” Russel said.
“Might not be that easy,” Jim Bob said.
Russel looked at Jim Bob. “You trying to count yourself in?”
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Backup. Help you scope things out. If you’re going to do it, I want you to come out of it alive and away from the law. They might not want to come down on Freddy, but they would you. You’d end up making them look bad. It’ll be said the FBI can’t take care of their charges, or that they’re double-crossers. They won’t like that, and they’ll clobber you but good.”
“You know you could get your ass shot off,” Russel said.
“I know,” Jim Bob said. “I’m not an ignoramus. But I won’t get my ass shot off. I’m fucking immortal.”
Slowly they turned their attention to me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I got a family.”
“And a good one,” Russel said. “Go back to them and take care of them. This isn’t a thing for you, and I wouldn’t want it to be. Something were to happen to you, and I’d have it on my head from here on out. Things are bad enough without me adding that.”
“I think maybe if I didn’t have a family—”
“You don’t need to explain yourself,” Jim Bob said. “We won’t think the worse of you.”