Unsightly Bulges Read online

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to laugh if I were you.” Dale looked indignant. “All the sheeple who follow blindly along are going to go over a cliff someday, and you’ll see Matt Macon standing on the edge, holding an American flag and a Glock.”

  “I would not be surprised,” Viv said.

  Since I was feeling like such an idiot for missing the Macon/Bacon thing, I leaned back to the front. “Listen, last night I did a little reconnaissance out at that radio station. I even talked to Macon.”

  “You what?” Viv whipped her head around, causing the Caddy to veer to the right. Dale yelped and grabbed the wheel.

  “Just for a little while. I was out and I thought I’d circle by, but while I was there he came outside. So I pretended to be a local wife and mother who was concerned about the moral compass of our society.”

  “You what?” Viv said again. “What are you doing here, going solo?”

  I must admit, it gave me a bit of satisfaction to see her jealous.

  “I didn’t learn much. He said he didn’t know who killed CJ.”

  “Of course he did,” Dale said. “What’s he going to do, confess to the – ” He lifted his hands and made more quote marks – “local wife and mother?”

  “Well, obviously he warrants a second look,” I said. “I just wanted to give you a heads up, in case we end up talking to him again. Just...follow my lead.”

  Viv grunted grumpily and Dale shrugged. I leaned back and petted Stump, feeling somewhat vindicated.

  Matt Macon’s big pickup was parked at the station. We hid in the Cadillac around the side of the strip club, which wasn’t open yet. Stump kept burping that awful smell, and although I tried to keep waving the stench toward the back of the car, some still got into the front seat.

  “Oh my gosh!” Dale said. “Whatever you stepped in still smells, bad!”

  “Sorry,” I said. I aimed Stump’s mouth so that the trajectory of the next one would land flat on him.

  “You might want to think about getting new shoes.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I might do that.”

  Stump burped again.

  “Holy cow! What is that? Did that dog – ”

  I interrupted him by shouting, “Look, he’s leaving! Let’s follow him!”

  Viv had the car in gear and was tearing across the parking lot like she was both Starsky and Hutch.

  I slammed back against the seat and said, “Slow down! Do you want him to know we’re back here? Fall back a little.”

  She fell back some. Not enough for my comfort, but Macon kept going so I guess it was okay. After four or five miles, he took a right off the highway and onto a dirt road.

  “We probably need a less conspicuous car if you’re going to be a PI,” Dale said.

  “What’s this ‘we’ business?” Viv asked. She swung the Caddy onto the dirt road and Stump and I bounced high in the seat.

  “You need something like a Honda Civic, or an F150.”

  Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? I thought sourly. That way Stump and I could just ride in the pickup bed.

  But I needn’t have worried. On Viv’s list of priorities, the Cadillac ranked at the top, above her designer purses, her suite at Belle Court, and certainly above me. If being a PI meant driving something else, she would find another career path.

  Macon’s truck was throwing up enough dust that he probably couldn’t see us, but I kept warning Viv to stay back anyway. He drove about three miles down the dirt road, then turned right.

  “I know this place,” Dale said. “My uncle used to come to a bootlegger down by the river.”

  Mine and Viv’s eyes met in the mirror, but neither of us said anything. I actually knew a few bootleggers of my own but since Lubbock County had finally gone wet (the third-to-last county in Texas to do so!) there really wasn’t much need for bootlegging anymore. You could get a bottle of wine on any corner for a lot cheaper. Coincidentally, that was around the same time I lost the last tiny shreds of control on my own drinking.

  We were nearing the cutoff where Macon had turned. Viv eased off the gas.

  “No, let’s keep going,” Dale said. He pointed down the road we were on.

  “You getting yellow?” Viv growled.

  Dale gave her a look, then burst out laughing. “What are you, Al Capone?” He twisted his mouth

  I leaned back in my seat, a bit afraid of the fallout. One did not simply make fun of Viv’s coolness.

  Oblivious as always, Dale pointed again down the road. “I’ll bet he’s going somewhere along this river. Keep going down here about a mile, then turn right again. All these roads out here make big blocks because they mark the edges of the fields. We can double back and come up on the other side.”

  Viv was silent but did as he instructed. I could only hope her silence indicated a new focus on retribution for the Al Capone remark.

  A few minutes later, Dale pointed again. “Turn here.”

  Viv turned without a word and we bounced in tense silence down another dirt road, this one parallel to the one Macon had turned on.

  Open cotton fields slowly gave way to low trees, then an actual forest. Well, okay. We were still in West Texas, so ‘forest’ is a relative term, but there was a stretch of mesquite trees thick enough to give off some shade, and they were especially thick as the river to the right of us dipped down.

  “I see cars in there,” Dale said, craning to see through the trees. “Yep, lots of cars. I’ll be that’s where he went. Some kind of secret meeting or something.”

  “Meeting? What kind of meeting?” I asked.

  “The kind you have in secret at the river bottom, I would assume.”

  Lots of cars, that’s what he’d said. Confronting one killer with the help of two other people – even if those people were Viv and Dale – was one thing. Secret river bottom meetings suggested dark rituals and violence.

  “Viv, go up here and park. We can walk back and try to sneak up on them.”

  Again, Viv did as she was told and I started to think the tension I’d felt was only on my part. Maybe she was okay with Dale making fun of her coolness and ordering her around. She would never let me get away with that, but whatever.

  Dale opened his door, then turned back to us before he got out. “Look. I don’t know what we’re going to encounter out here, so I came prepared.” He reached behind his back and drew out a pistol.

  “What the hell,” I said. “You brought a gun?” Guns made me very nervous. Having one pointed at your head has that effect.

  “Like I said, I don’t know what we’re going to encounter out here, and I wanted to be prepared. I want to make sure I keep you two protected.”

  See how annoying he is? Just when I get a good handle on my hatred for him, he goes and says something gallant like that.

  I looked at Viv, expecting her to have an answer to that, though. Viv carried a much more impressive piece in her purse. In fact, next to Viv’s, Dale’s gun looked...

  “Is that a toy?” Viv said, staring at the gun.

  “Of course not,” Dale scoffed. “It said right on the box, Not a Toy.” He held it with his index finger flat along the barrel, like they would show you in a safety video.

  Viv reached over and grabbed the gun. “It’s plastic! It’s a frigging BB gun!”

  “It’s not a BB gun. It shoots metal pellets.”

  “You’re going to protect us with BBs?”

  “I’m telling you, this thing is more powerful than you think.” He drew it back, studying it. “I shot myself in the foot with it last night, just to see. Stung like almighty hell.”

  “I’m sure it did,” Viv said, looking at him with derision. “Why didn’t you get a real gun?”

  “Because apparently there’s some big list somewhere of who’s allowed to buy guns and who isn’t. If I try to buy a gun, all kinds of alarms and sirens go off.” He waved his hand with impatience, and I ducked despite myself.

  “This looks like a real gun,” He sa
id. “If we get into a threatening situation and I pull this, the bad guy is gonna be like, ‘Whoah, man, I don’t want any trouble.’” He held his hands up and put a wide-eyed-in-terror look on his face to demonstrate.

  I couldn’t argue with him, since I’d just had that same reaction.

  “And believe me, if someone comes at you and you shoot them with this, it’s gonna slow them down.” He turned the gun and studied it. BBs clinked around inside.

  Viv’s lips flattened and her chin jutted out. It looked like she had a lot she wanted to say, but she just looked at him like she couldn’t believe this was actually happening.

  “Now, we’re just going to sneak up there and see what we can see, then we’re coming back. Right?” Dale looked from me to Viv, sliding the gun back into the back of his jeans.

  “What else would we do?” I asked. “Seriously, what kind of meeting do you think this is? How many cars did you see?”

  “Do you think we’re talking Klan here?” Viv asked. “Skinheads?”

  We had discussed the Klan earlier, but Viv said she heard they were mostly just a bunch of geriatric old coots. There were rumors of a younger group that was affiliated with some white supremacy people in Montana or Wyoming – one of those cold states with the mountains.

  My heart thudded that we might have actually stumbled onto a violent hate group. Plus, I could tell Bobby about them and he could quit making highly-not-funny jokes about me being a suspect.

  “I think that’s a good plan,” I said. “We’ll stay hidden in the tree line, see what’s going on, and then relay the information back to Bobby.”

  “Since when are doing all the work and then giving the police the glory?” Viv’s nose went into the air.

  “Since we’re facing a group of people who are possibly violent. With a BB gun.”

  “We don’t have any idea if they’re violent or not. It could be a company picnic or something.”

  “Out here? At the mostly-mud river?”

  “Okay you two,” Dale said, holding up a hand. “Just follow my lead, okay? You’re not taking that dog, are you?”

  I wanted to take that gun and shoot him right in the forehead. “Of course I’m taking her. It’s 90 degrees out here.”

  “We might have to get out of here in a hurry.”

  “Then you fight them off with your little stinger,” I said, tucking Stump against me and opening the door.

  It was a little cooler in the trees, but not much. Stump burped again and the smell was every bit as bad as it had been the first time, but I thought we were far enough away Dale and Viv couldn’t smell it.

  “Good God, Salem, scrape off the bottom of your shoes while we’re out here,” Dale said. “Try to find a cow patty or two to walk through. It would smell better than whatever that is.”

  I sneered at him, but since his back was to me he didn’t notice. I was a little bit concerned about Stump, to be honest. She’d eaten bizarre things before with no ill effects, but still. Nothing healthy could smell that bad, ever.

  I looked back at Viv making her way over tall grass and around the occasional prickly pear cactus in her designer shoes. She looked P.O.ed.

  I probably should clarify here that when I say trees, I mean mesquite trees, which are only trees in the most basic sense of the word. They have trunks, which are thin and bent at odd angles. Not even Frank was skinny enough to actually hide behind a mesquite tree. The fruit of the tree was a long bean that kind of looked like string beans, but wider and flatter. In the late summer and early fall, the beans dried and fell to the ground. They rattled like castanets as we walked through them, so we tried to step carefully. It made for slow going.

  About a hundred yards from the car, I started to hear voices. Viv, Dale and I looked at each other, and I guess Viv started to get into the spirit of the thing, because she didn’t look mad anymore. She looked to be on high alert.

  We walked even more carefully, and my heartbeat started to thud in my ears.

  We came to the cars and pickups parked among the trees. Like Dale said, there were quite a few – at least eight or ten from where I stood, and maybe more. We crouched and hurried to a Chevy Suburban, using it for cover.

  Dale and Viv plastered themselves against the pickup bed. I crouched beside them, trying to see over the cars.

  The voices were coming from someplace down, I realized. There must be a hollow down by the river. Were they down there plotting their next murder?

  Suddenly a cheer went up from the river bottom, and we all looked at each other. Good God. It certainly sounded like a blood-thirsty mob.

  Dale pointed toward where the voices were coming from. Then he made a circular motion with his hand, indicating that we should go around the back of the cars and come up the other side.

  Viv and I crouched low and followed him. Viv reached into her bag, and I thought she was about to get her own gun, but instead she pulled out her phone. She tapped it a few times, then held it up to record as we went.

  We tiptoed through dry grass and passed a few more pickups and a low-riding Town Car. We were edging slowly closer to the edge of the river, and I could see now the wide path that scooped between the trees and down. It could have been a crude boat ramp, if the boat was small.

  There was another cheer and a few rough cries of something I couldn’t make out. The tone held a distinctly masculine and violent quality, it seemed to me. Again, the three of us looked at each other. Viv held her phone up in that direction.

  A big white double-cab pickup sat closest to the bank, and we scrambled up to it. Under the noise of the crowd, I could hear something rustling around in the pickup bed.

  Viv looked at me, wide-eyed, and motioned toward the pickup bed with her head. I peeked tentatively over the edge, fully expecting to see someone tied up and gagged back there.

  Instead, I saw a tarp, half pulled back to reveal wire animal crates.

  “What the...” I said as I pulled the tarp back further.

  A black rooster stepped from the back of the cage to the front, head jerking.

  Now, all roosters are black, right? At least the ones I know are. But they have white on their heads, the little red comb. This...thing...was completely black. Every feather, every inch of its wrinkly rooster face, the comb on its head. The knobby feet. Black. Shiny, evil-looking black.

  “What is that?” Dale whispered in horror.

  Viv had the phone out and was recording the whole thing.

  The rooster made a grumbly noise and stepped closer.

  Momentarily forgetting about the group at the river bottom, we stepped back so Dale could open the tailgate. He dragged the cage closer, peering through the mesh. “Did they paint him or something? Dye his feathers?”

  He opened the cage door and reached inside to feel.

  The rooster gave a lightning-fast peck at Dale’s hand and shot out of the cage.

  “Damn!” Viv shouted, jumping as high as her designer shoes would allow.

  The rooster ran between the three of us, pecking furiously at our feet. We danced around doing the high-step, and the thing landed one vicious peck at my calf. It felt like I’d been stabbed with a pen knife.

  “Holy crap! Get that thing away from me!”

  Dale bent and swiped at it, with the air of someone who was trying to swipe at a bomb, and it was just about as effective. The rooster lunged again and I screamed. I couldn’t help it.

  Dale picked up a stick from the ground and jabbed at the rooster. He succeeded in getting it away from me. The rooster came at him, all black indignant fury.

  “Uhhhhnnnn!” Dale said, his face drawn in terror. He spun around and danced like someone who was trying to keep both feet off the ground at the same time.

  “Damn, bro!” Came a new voice from the direction of the river bottom. “What you doing with Rambo?”

  “Get it off me!” Dale screamed. He jerked his knees high in the air while Rambo the Evil Rooster pecked furiously at his legs.

&nb
sp; The guy who’d spoken first wore a blue bandana around his head and mirror aviator glasses. A second, shorter guy with a backwards cap stood to his left, and the third came up behind, sporting a ten-months-pregnant belly and a stained straw cowboy hat that had been trampled by at least three different cows.

  Apparently these guys had dealt with Rambo before. Bandana looked at Sunglasses, who in turn looked at Cowboy Hat, and they sprang immediately into action. Bandana circled around behind Dale (still looking like someone trying to make his way through hot lava), and the other two grabbed the tarp from the back of the truck. Bandana said something in Spanish, bending low and making short sweeping motions toward Rambo.

  Bandana clucked and spoke the same Spanish phrase over and over, making the same short, sharp gestures, which seemed to be getting Rambo’s attention.

  With a quick flick, the other two dropped the tarp over Rambo and everything went still.

  Dale scrambled backwards, breathing like he’d just escaped the clutches of a fire-breathing dragon. I bent and rubbed at the spot on my calf. I kind of felt like that, too.

  Bandana stepped on the tarp, light-footed, keeping a careful eye on the mound under the tarp. Once he’d gotten close enough, he bent with a quick motion and scooped it up.

  “What the hell are you doing with Rambo?” he said again, mouth hard.

  “We didn’t do anything,” Dale said. “We were walking by and that – that thing just attacked us.”

  A look passed between the men and Cowboy Hat’s expression took on a chagrined quality. Apparently this was not the first time Rambo had escaped “on his own.”

  “Be careful with him,” Cowboy Hat said. “He’s still gotta do the final round.”

  “I am being careful,” Bandana shot back. “It’s my frigging bird. I know how to handle him.”

  Sunglasses snorted, then studied the ground very carefully at the look Bandana gave him.

  “He didn’t just attack you,” Bandana said, glaring at Dale. “You trying to steal my rooster?

  “What the heck is that thing, anyway?” Viv said. Viv was a strong believer in the best defense being a good offense.

  “Indonesian Rooster,” Bandana said proudly. “Only one in this part of the country.”