Bad Chili

by Joe R. Lansdale

  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.

  “Eee cut zere ’air regularly,” Pierre said. “Others eee set up on ees own, for zem, I can not ’elp yew.”

  “Wee-wee,” Leonard said.

  “It’s merci,” I said.

  “No,” Leonard said. “I have to wee-wee. You got a john here, Frenchy?”

  * * *

  We sat out in the parking lot and looked at what Pierre had given us.

  Leonard said, “Hope that guy ain’t gay. He could give our whole sexual orientation a bad name.”

  “Let me tell you,” I said. “He’s heterosexual, he’s not doing us any good either.”

  “What kind of fucking accent was that?” Leonard asked. “It changed from one word to the next.”

  “It was a bullshit accent is what it was. Closest Pierre’s been to France, or anything French, is a croissant. Maybe he’s been to Paris, Texas.”

  “I hear that,” Leonard said. “Don’t you know that fucker is worn out at the end of the day. Trying to remember what spin he’s been putting on particular words. Hell, he made me tired just to listen to him. What are the names he wrote down?”

  “Charles Arthur. Bill Cunningham.”

  “Whoa,” Leonard said. “Charles Arthur. You know who that is, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “King Arthur, the chili king. King Arthur Chili, like it said on the pad in the Jiffy bag.”

  “I know who King Arthur is,” I said. “I just didn’t know him as Charles Arthur.”

  “The pad in the Jiffy bag, then the name coming up at Antone’s, that’s certainly coincidental.”

  “There’s lots of those pads,” I said. “They give them out free all over town. Raul cut Arthur’s hair, probably picked up a notebook while he was there. King Arthur could have given it to him.”

  “With coded numbers written on it?”

  “You got a point there,” I said. “But Raul could have brought the book home and Horse Dick could have written down the coded numbers for some reason. It could have been something he was working on. That makes more sense to me, actually.”

  “Maybe,” Leonard said. “And still, Raul could have picked it up while cutting Arthur’s hair. Sneaked it.”

  “I have to ask the same question. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t we drive out to the plant, see if we can find King Arthur?”

  “Big shot like him,” I said. “I bet he’s never there.”

  “Yeah, but we got to start somewhere,” Leonard said. “Or how else we gonna get in our annoyance quota.”

  * * *

  KING ARTHUR CHILI ENTERPRISES, as the sign over the huge gate read, was way out in the country and set on about twenty-five acres. It was a cluster of big buildings that stank. One side of the acreage was a meat-processing plant, the other side housed the place where the chili peppers were ground and the chili was whipped up and shoved into and sealed in cans. The whole place smelled of hot pepper and drying blood.

  There was a rendering plant out back of it all, and twice a week at night the stink of it was absolutely awesome. It was where the tougher meat, the hides and horns, and the occasional old horse were processed into soap, fertilizer, and other odds and ends. Or at least I think they still made soap out of old horses. Maybe not.

  Joint used to pump out dead cow and horse stink in the form of greasy black smoke all the time, until city ordinances got tight and King had to start letting loose with his garbage smoke late at night, twice a week.

  It was such a stout stink that sometimes, the wind was blowing just right, it would travel out as far as where I lived, slip in through the windows and gouge my nose until I came awake. On the side of town where Leonard lived, twice a week it would damn near slay you.

  The lot was loaded with cars, but we found an empty space with some big shot’s name written on the curb. We parked in that slot like it was ours and we were proud to be there.

  The secretary was thin, young, silver-blond, and so goddamn cheery I wanted to strangle her. We told her we would l
ike to see King Arthur, and she told us he was out. We asked to see someone in charge, and after twenty minutes in the guest chairs, the skimming of several stimulating magazines on the chili business, a nice-looking man about fifty with shiny gray hair came out. He was dressed in a plum-purple leisure suit with a white belt and white shoes. The leisure suit looked brand-new, and this baffled me. They had quit making those horrors years ago. It pointed to the scary proposition that this guy liked those fuckers so much he had them special-made. In my eyes he was already guilty of something, if nothing more than being a public eyesore.

  He came over, shook our hands, told us his name was G. H. Bissinggame, and we told him ours. He asked us what he could do for us. I told him about Raul, how he used to cut King Arthur’s hair, told him about Raul’s murder, said we were curious about his death.

  Leonard said, “We’re kind of poking around, nothing official. We wanted to know if King Arthur could tell us anything about Raul might help us figure out who killed him.”

  Bissinggame furrowed his brow. “Why would Mr. Arthur know such a thing? Isn’t this a matter for the police?”

  “We’re not saying he knows anything directly,” I said. “We’d just like to talk to him. Something Raul might have said, anything might give us a lead.”

  “Why would he say anything to Mr. Arthur?” Bissinggame said. “Mr. Arthur was a customer, not the boy’s therapist.”

  “Then you knew Raul?” Leonard asked.

  “No.”

  “Then how did you know he was young?” Leonard said. “You called him a boy.”

  “Whoa, here,” Bissinggame said. “You’re being a little nasty. You’re trying to tie me into something, way you talk. You’re not the law. You don’t have the right to do that, and I’m sure there’s no need for Mr. Arthur to talk to you.”

  “I just asked if you knew him,” Leonard said.

  “No, you didn’t,” Bissinggame said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Leonard, here, he and Raul were very close. He’s a little touchy.”

  “I apologize,” Leonard said, but with his tone of voice he might as well have gone on and called Bissinggame an asshole.

  “Could you do this?” I asked. “Could we write down our names, phone numbers, and could you ask Mr. Arthur to call? We’re trying to help out the family, sort of piece things together for them. You know, last bits of information about their son.”

  “You said you were trying to find leads to the murder,” Bissinggame said.

  “That too,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you now,” Bissinggame said. “Mr. Arthur, he doesn’t return calls. That’s why he has a secretary, and this Raul, I recognize who he is because Mr. Arthur often conducted business while getting his hair cut here at the plant. But I didn’t really know the boy. Mr. Arthur said very little to him, as I recall.”

  “Let me ask this,” Leonard said. “What if Raul had a King Arthur Chili pad, and inside the pad there were some letters written down that coincided with phone numbers, and say these phone numbers connected with video stores, and say me and Hap had the pad and a couple videos, would that interest Mr. Arthur?”

  Bissinggame looked at Leonard as if he had just swung in on a vine. “What?”

  “Never mind,” Leonard said.

  “You need a lesson in manners,” Bissinggame said to Leonard.

  “You gonna give it to me?” Leonard said. “A man wearing a fuckin’ purple leisure suit is the one needs manners. Don’t you know shit like that offends everyone?”

  “Come on, Leonard,” I said.

  “I’m going to call security, you don’t leave right now,” Bissinggame said. “Our security people, they aren’t a bunch of fat cops. They don’t mess around.”

  “Come on, Leonard,” I said.

  “Security?” Leonard said. “Now I’m scared. What kind of leisure suits they wear? Lime green? Peach? You had on one of them peach kind, I’d have to hit you.”

  “We’re going,” I said.

  “Best do,” Bissinggame said. “Helen,” he yelled to the secretary. “Call security.”

  Helen picked up the phone. I took Leonard’s elbow and led him out of there. As we went down the corridor toward the exit, I said, “Shit, Leonard. I can’t take you anywhere. Next time, you stay your ass in the car.”

  “I bet that dick’s got on spotted boxer shorts,” Leonard said. “Man, them leisure suits, they’re a crime against humanity.”

  “Well, you’re right about that.”

  “Guy like that, way he defends his boss, I bet he’s got naked pictures of ole Chili King doing the ass end of a dead beef. Pins that to his mirror while he whacks off with his dick poking out of that leisure suit. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  “I got you.”

  “Fucker would give a snake a blow job, it wore a leisure suit.”

  “Give it a rest, Leonard.”

  “Cocksucker,” Leonard said. “Hope he gets a bowl of bad chili. Probably likes it that way, strained through his goddamn shit-stained underwear.”

  “Careful. You start talking bad about chili, Texas is sure to be next. And you know well as I do that’s not good.”

  “You’re right,” Leonard said. “I stepped over the line.”

  * * *

  We had just gone out the door when a white car with KING ARTHUR CHILI written on the side of it parked in the middle of the lot and two guys in green uniforms with badges and no guns came over and stood in front of us. One of them was about the size of a moose, and the other may well have been a moose without antlers.

  “We got a call you two were causing trouble,” said the real moose. He was chewing on an unlit cigar as casually as a cow chewing cud. The other guy, the one the size of a moose, had an expression about as illuminating as a potted plant, but lacking the warmth. He could have been thinking about mayhem and murder, lunch break and a cigarette, sex or a gerbil up his ass. That face gave nothing away.

  “How you know it’s us?” Leonard said.

  Moose grinned. “They said a white guy and a black guy.”

  “Yeah,” Leonard said. “How do you know you ain’t got the wrong black and white guy?”

  Not A Moose said, “Because they said the nigger had a smart mouth. You’re a nigger. You got a smart mouth.”

  “Now you’ve done it,” I said.

  “What?” Moose said.

  “I said now you’ve done it.”

  “What the fuck’s that mean?” Moose said.

  “It means,” Leonard said, “I’m in the mood to snap your dick off and shove it in your ear. Who you think you’re connin’? You ain’t even real law. Guys like you, we wipe our asses on you.”

  “Daily,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Leonard said. “Daily.”

  “Sometimes twice a day,” I said.

  “That too,” Leonard said.

  “Yeah,” Moose said, and his hand went to his back pocket and came back wearing a pair of brass knuckles.

  Leonard said “Asswipe!,” stomped the guard’s foot, grabbed the hand with the knucks on it, swung under the guy’s arm, then with a palm on the fucker’s elbow snapped him to the cement, bouncing his head off of it, smashing his cigar into his face.

  Not A Moose rushed forward then, about to grab Leonard. I kicked him in the leg, just above the ankle, stuck my thumb in his eye. He let out a yell and sat down in the parking lot, both hands over his face.

  “I’m blind! I’m blind!” he yelled.

  “Are not,” I said.

  “I can’t see!”

  “Take your hands off your face, you ignorant motherfucker,” I said.

  As Not A Moose experimented with his vision, I turned to watch Leonard. Leonard peeled the brass knucks off Moose’s hand and tossed them on top of the chili building, said, “Fetch that, dick cheese.”

  Dick Cheese, also known as Moose, came up on one knee and stayed there. He wouldn’t even look at us. He let the mashed cigar fall from his lips as if he were shed
ding a tooth.

  Leonard said, “Y’all through?”

  Dick Cheese nodded.

  “Good,” Leonard said. “You guys need you another line of work. You’re not even mediocre at this one. My preference is neither of you get up till we’re gone. Hear me? That’s just a preference. You get to choose for yourself. That’s what makes this country great. Free choice. But you get up, me and Hap, we’re gonna shake out the jams. Know what I mean?”

  We walked past Not A Moose, who was sitting on the ground nursing his watery eye. I said, “I’d put ice on it, I was you, otherwise it’ll get puffy all around. I’m sorry.”

  “You skinned the shit out of my ankle too,” Not A Moose said.

  “Ice might be good for that too,” I said.

  We strolled over to the truck and drove off.

  17

  A few days went by and no answers fell out of the sky on us. Raul was still dead. I hadn’t won the lottery. The two security guards didn’t show up with new brass knucks. Bissinggame didn’t send us a fashion catalogue containing custom-made leisure suits in ugly colors.

  There were events, however. Leonard had finally gotten the tick off his balls. Used a match, as I had suggested. It worked. ’Course, as he feared, he managed to burn his nuts, so I was on his shit list for a couple days. The tick ended up in the commode, a burial at sea.

  Somewhere during all this we put the notebook and the videos back in the Jiffy bag, placed them in a metal box, hid them out at Leonard’s old house inside a torn-out section in the back of his living room couch.

  I got my last rabies shot from my surly doctor, found out the squirrel head had come back positive from Austin. That part made me feel kind of weird for a day or two.

  Oh, yeah, and the guy in a yellow Pontiac wearing a cowboy hat was glanced by Leonard and myself on several occasions, following us when we were together a couple of times, following me once on my own, and following Leonard a few times. It was, of course, the yellow Pontiac I had seen outside of Leonard’s house the day I went in and found it tossed. So much for paranoia. Sometimes they are out to get you. They’d do better sneaking up on you, though, if they didn’t drive yellow Pontiacs. A Yorkshire hog in a three-piece suit and a derby with a red turkey feather in it would have been less conspicuous.