Bad Chili (15 page)

We turned down a dirt road along a row of mailboxes and lights on poles, drove past a dog kennel where a half dozen hot-looking Siberian huskies watched us pass.

Shortly thereafter, we drove onto as ugly a stretch of land as I’ve seen. You could tell right off that not too many years ago woods had stood here. Someone had clear-cut it, sold off the lumber, then made a mobile-home park out of it. In this case, they hadn’t even bothered to scrape it down to the clay. Some of the stumps still remained, burned black but still standing. Between clumps of stumps and pools of rainwater, trailers stood.

We drove past a row of run-down trailers with broken toys in the yard, sad dogs on chains, and finally drove around to a fairly nice little white trailer with pink trim. The yard was clean, except for the standard redneck signpost — any kind of black car on blocks. This one was a Ford Mustang. When I was in high school I had wanted one of those. Thought I’d die if I didn’t get one. I didn’t get one and I was still living.

We parked and let Ella out. She thanked us, and as she started toward the trailer the door opened and a man came out. He had on jeans and was shirtless and barefoot. He was a stocky guy with a slightly protruding but solid-looking belly. He was about my height. Good-looking fella with a crewcut.

“Where the hell you been, Ella?” he said. “I been sittin’ here waitin’ on my goddamn dinner.”

“My car, honey,” Ella said. “It wouldn’t start.”

“My car wouldn’t start,” Kevin said in a mocking tone. “It’s always somethin’, ain’t it, bitch?”

Ella turned to us. “Thanks. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “You sure you want to stay?”

“Yes,” Ella said.

“Hey,” Kevin said, “who you talkin’ to?”

“Ella . . .” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘do you want to stay?’”

“I mean you sound a little drunk, and maybe she ought not to stay.”

“You keep your nose out of my business, old man.”

“Old man?”

“Yeah. Old man.”

Ella took hold of Kevin’s shoulder. “Don’t, honey. They gave me a ride.”

Kevin pushed Ella down on the wet ground. Brett rushed over to help her up. “You get back in the truck, cunt,” Kevin said.

“That’s it,” I said. I had been standing outside the truck with the door open, leaning on it. I closed it and started toward Kevin.

Kevin said, “What you gonna do, fuckhead?”

“I can either sit you down and have a nice talk, or punch your lights out. Since I figure you’ll be a boring conversationalist, I like the second idea.”

“Punch my lights out?” Kevin said. “I’ll have you know I was a goddamn good boxer. I almost went pro.”

“Then I’m sure you’ve seen a left jab,” I said, and jabbed him. I hit him solid on the right eye and his head snapped back. Then I kicked hard off my back leg and caught him in the balls. I half-leaped then, caught his head as he bent over, drove it down with an elbow and lifted my knee into his face. When he came back up, his face bloody, I skipped in and caught hold of his arm and his shoulder, brought my right leg behind his right leg, and reared backwards hard as I could.

He went down quick and smacked his head against the dirt. Spittle flew out of his mouth and gleamed like a string of diamonds in the sunlight.

Ella rushed over, draped herself over him, held one hand toward me. “Don’t, Hap! Don’t hit him anymore.”

“Why not?” I said. “I’m just startin’ to enjoy myself.”

“He doesn’t mean it,” Ella said. “He can’t help himself. It’s not like him. He’s not himself.”

“Then who the hell is he?” I said. “Was he that other fella when he blacked your eye?”

“I pushed him into it,” Ella said.

“Jesus,” I said. “You better get straight, Ella. I can see a couple having a spat, even taking a slap at one another in a moment of anger. But this. Him punchin’ you around . . .”

Kevin had gotten up on one elbow. “You better go, man.”

“Why?” I said. “You going to whip my ass, big man?”

Brett came over and took my arm. She said, “Let’s go, Hap. Your testosterone is showing. Ella. You want to go with us, you can. You want to call someone about this. The women’s shelter. Whatever. We’ll make sure you get to do it.”

Ella shook her head. She started helping Kevin to his feet.

“You want to see the left jab again?” I said to him.

“You caught me by surprise,” he said.

“Looked to me I caught you in the eye,” I said.

“Then you kicked, like a sissy,” he said.

“Tell everybody a sissy kicked your ass, then,” I said.

Ella started helping Kevin toward the trailer. She paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Thank you, but it’s not your business. Really. It’s not your business.”

Ella went up the steps with her arm around Kevin. They went inside the trailer and closed the door. We got in the pickup and drove away.

Once we were out on the highway, Brett slid over close to me.

“You were magnificent, Hap.”

“I think I got a little John Wayne.”

“You know what?”

“What?”

“I just loved his movies. Will you take me home and seduce me?”

“Because I beat Kevin up you’re hot?”

“No. Because you got pissed when he called me a cunt. I am sometimes, but I thank you anyway.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I like what you tried to do for Ella. But she doesn’t change, Hap. She never does. I’ve tried to get her to leave him, but she keeps going back. Someday he’ll kill her.”

“I fear you’re right,” I said.

We drove back to Brett’s place, went to bed and made love, then showered together. I dressed and got ready to leave so she could have time to herself before going off to work.

As she kissed me ’bye at the door, I said, “I’ll be back.”

“Hell, I know that,” she said. “You done had a taste.”

I drove home, read until late, slept fitfully. Next morning I picked up Leonard and we cruised over to Antone’s.

The air was sweet-smelling after yesterday’s rain, but you could tell already it was going to be hot. It was going to be that kind of April where spring, except for an hour or so in the morning, was mostly forgotten. Ozone-layer problems, perhaps. I liked to blame it on all those evangelists and their goddamn hair spray. Hadn’t they heard of spritzers?

Antone’s was what used to be called a barber college and hairdressing salon. It did business, but it mostly trained people for business. It was located where Main crossed Universal Street. Below Universal was a poor section of town, but on the opposite side of the street things began to look up. Drive a short distance and you were on the town square, where things were clean and bright.

Go the other way, you were descending into a toilet that might flush at any moment. A place where Those in Power liked to keep the people they thought of as rejects.

We parked in the parking lot next to Antone’s and a recreation center that used to be a 7-Eleven before it got robbed so often it was sort of like a free-money drop for the thugs of LaBorde. Through the glass you could see folks who ought to have jobs, or kids that ought to be in school, shooting pool. There were a number of motorcycle types in there as well. I hoped none of them recognized Leonard from his little escapade at the Broken Wheel.

Leonard glanced through the glass at the pool players. He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face told me plenty. Leonard thought most of these folks were lazy shits and worthless, and I suppose he was right to some degree. Many of them were just that. Plain sorry. But I never found that life worked that way, black and white. Good and evil. Most of the time it was a mixture. That’s what made it so hard. You couldn’t generalize and be a thinker. There were assholes on both sides of the coin, but there were good people shouldering bad breaks as well. Miss two paychecks, have the car break down, and you could go from lower middle class to living in a cardboard box under the river bridge, eating out of Dumpsters and pushing a shopping cart.

Inside Antone’s there was a lot of activity, people cutting hair and doing perms on folks with a desire for cheap haircuts, coloring, and curls. Always a scary proposition to get a haircut at a beauty and barber college.

I used to get my hair cut that way before I decided three bucks was too much for what they did to me, and eight bucks downtown at a real barber shop was just right. When I got my cheap haircuts it wasn’t at Antone’s. It was the original barber college, and it was located in another poor part of LaBorde back when we called LaBorde a town, not a city. The place was cleverly named Bob’s Barber College, and it smelled of hair oil, shaving cream, and men’s sweat. That’s all you saw there. Men. It didn’t do beauty cuts and it didn’t do anything fancy, so it didn’t attract women. It was a place where men talked the kind of talk that used to be called man talk. Hunting and fishing, cars and dogs and women. Usually in that order.

Got your hair cut there, way it was done was limited. There was the Dust Bowl Oakie cut, which seemed mostly a kind of hand-on-top-of-head-and-cut-around-it style, shaving from about the middle of your head to below your ears. Then there was the cut called by many of us the Mental Health and Mental Retardation cut. Same style they gave the mentally handicapped at the state school. This translated as cut what you see, and all you want, long as there’s some hair left on the top of the head like a topknot. Got through with you on that, you looked a little bit like a turnip. There was also the GI cut, which was a shaved head. This was mostly given to those suspected of insects. And finally, there were standard jobs, like Little Man Number One. This was almost passable unless you wanted it blocked in the back. That didn’t exist. The head got cut pretty good, but when it came to the back of the neck, it got shaved slicker than a snot-covered doorknob. There was Little Man Number Two as well. This one you got a haircut and a shave, as well as a few deep cuts soaked in some alcohol-based stink-water that made flies light on your face. Lastly, there was Little Man Number Three, but it was so dreadful it’s difficult to talk about. This was the specialty of Bob himself, guy who taught the others. He gave all his haircuts while drunk and with a palsied hand, and many of us suspected his tools of trade were the Weed Eater and the garden snips.

Nothing like old memories.

Me and Leonard spent a few minutes watching a young blond lady with scissors snip hair out of an elderly man’s nose, but when the hairs being snipped began to yield little gooies on their stalks, I lost interest.

Finally a man came over to help us. He was short and pale-skinned and had his dark hair combed back tight and plastered with something so shiny you could almost see your reflection in it. He had one of those pencil-thin mustaches like forties movie stars wore, ones make you look like you had a drink of chocolate milk and forgot to wipe your mouth. He had his colorful shirt open almost to his navel, and let me tell you, that was no treat to view. He had a chest like a bird and a little potbelly and a thin straight line of hair that ran from chest to navel and looked as if it had been provided by the nose hairs the blonde had clipped. He was wearing a gold medallion on a chain around his neck. The medallion reminded me of those aluminum-foil coins you unwrap and find chocolate inside. He must have been on the bad side of forty. A face, a body like that, you’re not born with it. It takes some real abuse and neglect to create.

“May I ’elp you,
messieurs
. I am Pierre.”

His accent was right out of Peppie Le Pew, the Warner Brothers cartoon skunk, with maybe a bit of the Frito Bandito thrown in. Not quite Spanish, not quite French, all false.

“Pierre?” Leonard said. “You’re really named Pierre?”

“That ees correct.”

“Where’s Antone?” Leonard asked.

“There is no Antone,” Pierre said. “It’s jest a name I liked.”

“Then you’re the owner?” I asked.

He nodded. “What ees the thing I can due fer yew?” Pierre said, and his accent was even less identifiable now. Some German seemed to have slipped into it.

Leonard gave Raul’s name and said, “Seems he was killed. Murdered. It’s been in the papers, so you probably knew that.”

“Oh, my,” Pierre said. “I do not read zee papers.”

Leonard gave me a knowing look, one that put me in Pierre’s camp.

“I knew eee was missing. The cops, zey ’ave been ’ere. But ded, dis I deed not know.”

“What we want to know,” I said, “is about this deal you have with your graduates cutting hair in people’s homes.”

“Eet ees all zee rage,” Pierre said. “Ze wealthy customers, zey love it. Raul, he was, a, how yew zey . . . goode one. Unlike some.”

Pierre glanced at a young man who was cutting furiously at a woman’s long blond hair. The guy had a strained look on his face like he had never done this before, and knew even if he did it again he wouldn’t be any better.

Pierre turned back to us. “Some, zey are quite . . . how you say . . . ’opeless.”

“Did Raul do a lot of these jobs?” Leonard asked.

“Some. Eee may ’ave done others I dew not know of. But many customers called ’ere, for referrals. We gave Raul some of zeees referrals. Eet ees part of our zervice to graduates.”

“Can you tell us who these people were?” I asked.

“Are you with ze po-leece?”

“No,” Leonard said.

“Zen . . . I don’t know.”

“We’re not askin’ you to turn over the secrets to the atomic bomb,” Leonard said.

“We’re friends of Raul, and we’d like to talk to people who knew him,” I said. “It’s for his parents. We’re kind of . . . you know . . . trying to piece together his life for them. Something they can cling to. You understand?”

Pierre nodded, and when he spoke this time, he almost sounded tongue-tied. “I suppose zere is nofhing rong weeth zat.”

We followed him into his office. He sat down behind his desk while we stood. He rummaged in a drawer, came up with a leather-bound file book. He opened it, ran his finger along a page. He stopped, made a satisfied noise, found a pad and pen and wrote down a couple of names for us, gave them to Leonard.

“Just these two?” Leonard said.