Hot in December

by Joe R. Lansdale

  That’s when Booger said, “I took a look.”

  He was standing right at the edge of the hallway, on the carport side. His pants were dirty and a little damp, his shoes were dripping mud.

  Cason said, “Goddamn, Booger, I nearly shit my pants.”

  “If I had been them other guys, you’d have bled your pants as well,” he said.

  “They couldn’t sneak up on me like that,” Cason said.

  “You say,” Booger said.

  “Did you come through the carport?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “I just looked that way,” I said.

  “Not when I was coming through.”

  “We could have shot you,” I said.

  “No. Don’t think so.”

  “Why didn’t you come through the front door, they’re watching, they would see you come back and think you’re still me,” Cason said.

  “Oh, I parked out front and walked into the carport casual like,” Booger said. “I didn’t care if they saw me. They’d just think I was the same guy, and I was using the carport door. But, you know what? No one is out there. Not yet. The cops say they don’t need to be here because no one knows, and Pye Anthony, he can set his own time. Besides, I just wanted to see the look on your faces when I snuck up on you.”

  “Yeah,” Cason said, “quite the fucking joke.”

  “Look, let’s sit at the table,” Booger said. “It’s nearly daylight and I’m so hungry I could peck corn out of hog shit and eat it.”

  “I was a little hungry,” I said. “Not so much now.”

  Nineteen

  I got down some bowls, cereal and milk, tossed some turkey bacon in a pan, and set it to frying. I poured out the old coffee and started some new. I put toast in the toaster. Cason and Booger sat at the table. A long blade of light was sneaking in through the corners of the curtains over the sliding glass door to the backyard.

  “I went out to where you told me they took you and your wife,” Booger said. “I parked down the road a piece, on a little logging trail, got out and made my way through the woods, came to a rise in the trees that overlooked the construction site. One thing you can be certain, there’s a bunch of them.”

  Booger was pouring cereal in his bowl, measuring it out carefully. “I got a pretty good look at some of them. I thought about killing them right then, but I didn’t know exactly how many were there and though there were guns in the car, right with me I just had the two handguns. I had some ammunition, but it would have been a running fight. I wouldn’t have got them all. They had plenty of cover in that building, and some open distance I’d have to cover that might make things difficult for just one man. It seemed like a bad idea, though now I’m sort of wishing I had tried them, just to see how things would have worked out. I could have gone back to the car and got some long-range firepower, but I figured I ought to get the lay of the land first. I did see some interesting shit, though.”

  Booger went to work on the cereal. We watched him eat. He ate like it was his last meal, or the last one he wanted. After a couple of minutes he took the cereal box and poured more in the bowl, added milk. He picked a strip of bacon off the plate and ate it like a mongoose swallowing a snake.

  “I was watching, counting those motherfuckers,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants. “I could see lights through the windows on the building, and now and again I could see someone go past the window. I didn’t know what they were doing there, but after a while a couple of women came out laughing, got in a car with a guy and he drove them away. I guess it was a pipe-laying session inside.

  “Then this black Suburban drove up and a man got out—”

  “What did he look like?” I said.

  Booger described him. It was a general description, but with the Suburban added in, I knew it was the guy who I had hit with the stick and tied his shoestrings together. He had worked himself free, way I figured he would. I said, “It’s the guy I told you about. The one I hit with the stick.”

  “You want me to tell this, or what?” Booger said.

  “Sure. Sorry.”

  “So this guy gets out, and he runs up to the building and goes inside, and after about five minutes they all come out. Or a bunch of them do. Maybe someone was still inside, I don’t know. But a bunch come out, and there’s these two with them, guys in charge. You could tell by the way they carried themselves, like they were hot shit on a stick. They’re the ones I think you got the trouble with, an older guy and a younger one. From a distance they looked something alike.”

  “Sounds like them,” I said.

  “They push this guy around, the one who came up in the Suburban, and then the older man, the one in charge, knocks him to the ground with his fist, then this other guy in a black leather jacket with a kind of fucked-up head, comes up and pulls a pistol and shoots him right between the eyes.

  “That would be Kevin,” I said.

  “Next thing, most everyone goes inside, except the shooter and one other man. They carry the body to the Suburban, throw it in the back. The shooter drives the Suburban out of there and the other guy follows in one of the other cars.”

  “They killed him because he fucked up,” I said. “I got the best of him, and they killed him for it.”

  “One less,” Booger said. “I counted eight, counting the guy they popped. That leaves seven that I saw, so we know we got that many. But then one more got added.”

  “How’s that?” I said.

  “A guy showed up. He came in a regular car, a Chrysler, had on a coat, but when the coat swung open the lights around the place flashed on a badge on his chest. I could see a gun on his hip. A cop.”

  I described Lieutenant Ernest and Sergeant Allen, knowing neither wore uniforms or badges, but thinking it was possible. Booger said, “Nope. This guy was small. He had on a fedora, but he had a uniform on under the coat, like maybe he’d been in a hurry and hadn’t totally undressed, wanted to keep that gun handy. I didn’t get a good look at him, but he wasn’t fat like your one guy, and he wasn’t tall like the other you described. He was a little guy, kind of stocky more than fat. He walked funny, like maybe he had something wrong with his foot. That ring any bells?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, one thing is for sure, one cop is in with them. Here’s how I see it. This cop, or cops, if more are involved, what they’ll do is they’ll set it up so you’re watched, but the watcher will be one of them, or several of them, and at some point there will be a break-in, and the cops won’t know about it, how it happened, or that’s how they’ll tell it, considering it will be one of them or more than one of them that does the breaking.”

  “And I get shot with a cold piece they have, and they claim the shooter got past them. They did what they could, but they were too late.”

  “I think that’s how they’ll play it,” Booger said. “That won’t be all of it. I figure they’ll do it like that, and then it’ll be the rest of your family, because they know who was in the car that ran over your neighbor too. It might take time, but they’ll get to all of you. Which means, of course, you want to do this right, we got to get them all, clean them up like sweeping a rat’s nest out of the attic.”

  The day went by slowly, and after a while Cason went out and got in his car, still wearing the same clothes, and drove off. It would just look like he had come over to visit and had stayed the night. Cops were watching, they’d know I said an old army buddy was maybe going to show up. They could figure who that was and how things were anyway they wanted. It didn’t matter. If they figured it was one of the bad guys, then maybe they’d stop him and talk to him. But as I looked out the window and watched Cason drive away, it certainly didn’t look that way. I eyed both ends of my street, across the way where another street met the one in front of our house. If the cops were out there, they were disguised as mailboxes or my neighbor’s cars.

  I dropped the curtain and went back to being nervous and anxious and feeling as if I were inside a bad d
ream I couldn’t wake up from.

  Booger found a book I had in the living room, a novel, and sat and read. I didn’t know he could read. I was beginning to realize Booger was a complicated sociopath. It was odd to see him there on the couch, an unlit Christmas tree sitting in the corner. I thought about the presents that were stored in the closet, and that we would be putting them under the tree and opening them come Christmas morning. If we were still alive.

  I took a shower, and since we agreed we didn’t want any radios or TV on to keep us from hearing what we might need to hear, I tried to read something myself, but mostly I just walked around the house like a decapitated ghost looking for its head. Somewhere during that day we ate lunch, and then about six that afternoon a phone rang. It was a phone Booger had, a burner. He answered it. He listened for a moment or two, said, “Yeah,” and then came into the hallway where I was standing.

  “That was Cason,” he said.

  “Won’t they trace that phone to here?” I asked.

  “Not this one,” he said. “They don’t even know to look for a call to it. It’s clean, and I’ll probably use it for another call or two, then get rid of it. Besides, if it came to it, if they were to trace it, I’d just say it’s my phone and Cason has the number. That he’s the one put you onto me as a bodyguard. I got excuses out the ass for why he might call me.”

  “What’s the news?” I asked.

  “Cason said he’d been working his news sources, and from what he can tell, Ernest and Allen are clean cops, good cops, and they’ve come down on Anthony before, back when he was a petty criminal. They were tough on the guy whose place the Anthonys took. He said it doesn’t look like they’re in on shit. ”

  “Guess I could be wrong,” I said, “but I don’t like the way those cops kept warning me off.”

  “Maybe they were just trying to watch for your skin,” Booger said. “I don’t know. I don’t understand that kind of thing, really. I don’t like cops. I don’t like anyone in authority of any kind. Except me, of course. I’m my own authority.”

  I went in the kitchen to have something to do and poured myself a glass of juice. Booger asked for the same and I poured him a glass. We sat at the table, and I finally let what was on my mind come out. “Booger, I got to ask. You say you’d kill pretty much anyone?”

  “I got to have a reason, but it doesn’t have to be in depth. Sometimes you just got to ask, and if there’s money, and if I’m bored, well, I can sign on. You asking for a reason?”

  “These guys, the Anthony pair, the men working for them, you’ll try and kill them because Cason asked?”

  “Yeah. I thought I’d get a small bodyguard fee from you as well, just for the hell of it. That’s good insurance anyway, like Cason said. In fact, you ought to write me a check pretty damn quick.”

  “What if it was me, and they hired you to kill me?”

  “I’d kill you.”

  “So you could change sides?”

  “No. I gave Cason my word. I wouldn’t go back on my word. I said I’d kill them if it came to it, and I will. Next week, someone wanted you dead and paid me money, I might kill you. Well, all right, I wouldn’t. Cason says you’re a friend. But I make few distinctions. But if I sign on, if I’m riding for the brand, I try and keep riding for it.”

  “Why are you so close with Cason?”

  Booger sipped his juice. “I don’t know. I just like him. I think he reminds me of my brother, somehow. My brother is dead. He got caught stealing a car and the cops chased him. He flipped the car. Thing is, and I’d deny it, I was in the car. I got away after it was flipped. He didn’t. He couldn’t. He had a steering wheel through him. Cason, lot of times he reminds me of my brother. Way he talks, or something, even the way he moves. He doesn’t look a thing like him, but it’s something. Or maybe it’s just me that thinks it’s something.”

  I nodded, decided not to pressure the question after that. I was afraid I might talk him into turning on me, and maybe even Cason. It was impossible to figure what made Booger tick. Maybe, if in some way I could know, the truth would drive me mad.

  I wrote out Booger a check for a thousand dollars, which was a good chunk of change, but the thing was, I wasn’t in any mood to be stingy, considering the circumstances. It was nice to have it on record. We hung around all day, talking a little, but mostly changing rooms, sometimes together, sometimes not. I even took a nap for a while. When I got up I asked Booger if he needed to rest for a bit, but he waved me off and kept reading the book he’d gotten off our shelf.

  About dark, me and Booger were sitting in the living room, no lights on in there, only the kitchen light was on in the house. It lit the hall a little, the space between kitchen and carport, and that was it. We figured the light would be where they went, and we wouldn’t be there. Anyway, Booger was sitting there quietly on the couch, no longer able to read in the dark. He had his hands on his knees and was very relaxed, not moving. I couldn’t hear him breathe. I had to keep catching myself to stop bouncing my leg up and down. I didn’t know exactly what it was we were waiting for. While we were sitting there Booger lifted his head, said, “Someone’s outside.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” he said.

  He got up, reached under his coat and brought out a nine and held it by his leg. He went to the living room window and gently peeled the curtain aside just a little bit, looked out. He waved me over. I took a careful look. It was a bald guy. He was wearing a long coat, but I could see his badge on his chest, his gun on his hip. He was holding something under his coat by pressing his right arm to his side.

  “Know him?”

  “The dispatcher from the police department,” I said.

  Booger walked to the wide gap doorway that led into the hallway and stood there waiting. I came up beside him. He kept his voice low, said to me, “When he knocks, cross into the kitchen and come to the opening to the hallway from the other side, near the front door.”

  Suddenly the doorbell rang.

  “Okay,” Booger said, “doorbell, not a knock. Ask who’s there, but don’t stand in front of the door. You do, it won’t go well for you.”

  “What the shit, Booger? It’s a cop.”

  The bell rang again.

  “You go where I told you, and you speak out loud near the front door, but not in front of it, and you ask who it is. Go.”

  I went. It took me only a few seconds to end up where Booger said for me go. The bell rang again.

  I said, “Who is it?”

  “Police department,” a voice I didn’t recognize said. “I’m protection detail.”

  I glanced up the hallway at Booger. He was barely showing from the living room. He leaned out and shook his head.

  “What detail?” I said. “There’s not supposed to be one yet.”

  “The Lieutenant thought we should go ahead and start, case word had got out, you know, to Pye Anthony. You standing in front of the door?”

  I thought that was an odd question. I looked at Booger. There wasn’t a lot of light, but I could see him nod.

  “Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t, and in that moment I remembered what Booger had said about seeing a cop out at Anthony’s, one that didn’t match the description of the two I’d given him, and in that delayed instant I knew for certain who the rogue cop was.

  And in that same moment of realization the door exploded.

  Twenty

  There was a splintering sound along with a blast of thunder. My ears felt as if they had collapsed inside, and then there was a bit of street light through the door, from the hole that was now in it, and an instant after the explosion, Booger stepped into the hall and cut loose with his nine-millimeter, knocking fist-sized holes around the already existing canyon of a hole that had been made by the blast.

  I don’t know exactly how many times Booger fired, but I heard a kind of yell, and then a thud, and then Booger came down the hall and opened the door and I stepped out beside him. Trying to
crawl down the walk was the dispatcher from the cop shop, leaking blood like oil from a busted transmission. He didn’t crawl far before he said, “Fuck,” and lay on his stomach with his face on the concrete walk. He didn’t say anything else. The blood kept pooling around him. Near the front door was a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. The air smelled of gunpowder.

  Booger said. “I think I hit him just about every shot. I can’t believe that motherfucker crawled that far.”

  He went outside and bent down over the dead man, said, “Ah, he had on a vest. Didn’t help. Less impact, I guess, but it got through. Got him once in the neck, too. That was the kill shot, I think. You go in and call the police.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said. “They just tried to kill me.”

  “It’s exactly the right thing to do,” Booger said.

  I wasn’t so sure, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t know what the right thing to do was. I did know Booger had kept me from being cut in half from a double-barrel shotgun blast.

  It was the longest twenty minutes I can remember, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to be when they got there; how they would take my bodyguard killing one of their own. Booger had come in the house and put the nine on the kitchen table. He went to the refrigerator and took out the plastic bottle of juice, screwed off the cap and drank straight from it, gulped until it was finished.

  “Ahhh,” he said, and threw the bottle in the trash. I wasn’t in the frame of mind to tell him we recycled. He said, “You and me ought to go out front and wait on them.”

  Booger took the burner phone, went out back and did something with it. When he came back, he locked the door, plucked the nine from the table and led the way outside through the open front door, as far as the doorway anyway. I followed like a duck. We sat in the open doorway like we were just there to enjoy the night. Neighbors were coming out of houses, though no one was brave enough to cross the street or go any farther than their porch. I didn’t blame them. Had I looked outside and seen two men sitting in front of an open door with a hole in it about head height and a bleeding dead man on the concrete walkway, I would have been hesitant as well.