Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online

keeping the connection between you and this biker’s murder to himself. But that won’t last. He’ll have to say something eventually, and who’s to say someone else won’t put it together? Once the connection is established, you better have a damn good idea what’s clickin’, and it better be plain as day.”
    “I don’t know exactly what is clickin’.”
    “Did you kill the biker?”
    “I told you I didn’t shoot anybody. I didn’t even know the sonofabitch was dead until just now. You think I’d kill someone and not tell you?”
    “I had to ask.”
    “All right. You’ve asked.”
    Leonard looked pouty for a moment or two. I said, “Start by tellin’ me what happened. You didn’t just decide to roll in pig shit, did you?”
    “No. That was sort of a natural by-product of my adventure. And believe me, without you it just wasn’t the same. We’re like the Hardy Boys, you know.”
    “No. I’m a Hardy Boy, and you’re Nancy Drew.”
    “I’ll let that slide. Hap, when we were at the hospital, and I went out of the waiting room, I didn’t really plan to go anywhere. But the Doc was taking his time, and I thought, well, I’ll step out, get something to eat for us and come back. But it didn’t work that way. I drove off and couldn’t get Raul off my mind. The boy drives me crazy.”
    “Aren’t we a little old for this kind of infatuation? All this huffin’-and-puffin’ shit?”
    “I guess, but I got to thinking about him and drove out to the house. I thought he might be there. Had his fling with the biker, and maybe it was over and he’d come back. Wild thoughts, but that’s what I was thinking. Thing was, I didn’t know how I’d feel about him coming back if he did, but I wanted to see him again. It’s that simple. Little bastard had my nose open.”
    “Want to open your nose, you should try pig shit. I have a cold, and that opened my nose right up. That mess on the carpet, you’re cleaning that.”
    Leonard nodded. “What say we eat first, then go out on the back porch and talk?”
    We finished the Taco Bell food, and I opened a can of tuna and a jar of mayonnaise, whipped a tablespoon of mayonnaise with the tuna and put it on bread. Leonard ate the sandwich and then another. When he finished, I made another pot of coffee and we went outside with cups of it.
    The back porch wasn’t much. It was close to giving up the ghost. The boards were gray and fiercely weathered, but the view out there wasn’t bad. There was the dark East Texas woods, topped by the sky, which was a peculiar blue this day, made all the more beautiful by the golden brightness of the sun; the clouds flowed across it like lilies cast upon a great and tranquil ocean. Off to the right was a creek. You could hear the water gurgling, like a happy woman humming. There was a slight breeze. Outside you couldn’t smell the mildew, dust, and pig shit. Leonard talked.
    “Stuff I was gonna tell you about me and Raul, it don’t seem like much now. Not after what’s happened. All I can say is things were falling apart. I guess I knew they would in time. We were just too different. He was a little too young for me, from another world really. Wanted someone didn’t like guns and boxing and martial arts. Someone more refined.”
    “I hear the word
refined
, Leonard, I think of you.”
    “You bet. But we weren’t doing so good, and he got so he wasn’t coming home like he should, and here I was staying up nights watching Dave Letterman and John Wayne movies, and he’d come in tired and cranky and short on explanation. Hell, I guess I knew he was fuckin’ around. But I love the guy, you know, so it blinds you. I thought maybe I was just being stupid jealous. Thought the trouble we were having was a stage we were goin’ through. I believed his shit about he was working—”
    “Working?”
    “Yeah. He finished hairdressin’ school. Kind of elite business. He was gettin’ into this deal they got now where the rich folks