Free The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale Page A

house was a goner, and this sonofabitch was a goner.
    We got out of the car and walked over to the Chief. He noticed us out of the corner of his left eye. Rain was dripping off the brim of his hat. He had little pop eyes, like a Boston terrier, and his chin went back and low and reminded me of an iguana. He lifted his head slightly as if he was sighting us from a rock. As he did, rain splashed into his left eye and he blinked it out. Black goo, the source being the Red Man package poking out of his shirt pocket, oozed out of the corners of his mouth and slid into wrinkles that served as culverts on either side of his chin.
    His belly moved when he moved, and sometimes when he didn't. Like it had a mind of its own and places it wanted to go. Worse though, even if you didn't want to look, you couldn't help but notice the bulge in his pants. He'd obviously been ruptured and was in need of a truss. His right leg looked to be sprouting a grapefruit.
    Near the grapefruit, riding in a long black holster, was a .44 Western-style revolver. Chief Cantuck appeared to be in his fifties. Maybe older. A face like that, a belly like that, it was hard to tell.
    "Who are you?" he said, turning to give us a full view.
    "Hap Collins," I said, and we shook hands.
    Leonard stuck out his hand and the Chief hesitated, then took it the way you might take hold of something dead. Leonard grabbed Chief Cantuck's hand hard and shook briskly. "Leonard Pine, Smartest Nigger in the World."
    "What?" said the Chief.
    "It's just a little joke of his," I said.
    "Well, all right. Look here, what do y'all want? This is law and fire department business. You ain't supposed to be hanging around here."
    I said, "Lady at your office, with a hair cone on her head, said we'd find you here."
    "Yeah, well, say what you want and get it over with," Chief Cantuck said. "And I don't know about you, but I think that cone of hair looks pretty good."
    "Appears you've lost this one," Leonard said, nodding at the house.
    "Yeah, guess it does," said Cantuck. "No big loss. White trash rental. Bill Spray owns it, rents it to anyone with thirty-five dollars a month or any gal wants to grease his rope. One or both of them things, and the place is yours on a monthly basis, long as he don't have to fix nothing."
    "Guess it wasn't the sort of joint attracted the Rockefellers," I said.
    "No, it wasn't. But a couple hundred dollars' worth of plywood, a few two-by-fours and some tin and cardboard, Bill can throw this buddy up again and start rentin'. Too bad the renters weren't inside. I'd have liked it all right had they gotten cooked with it. I been called out here half a dozen times by the neighbors. Always fightin'. Big ole fat gal and a couple of men lived here. Those two men fight over that sow like she was goddamn Marilyn Monroe.
    "Last time I was in here they had all kinds of pornography strewn about. Them magazines with women with their hands up their holes, or their asses in the air with a carrot jammed in it. Stuff like that. And it wasn't just pussy magazines. They had'm some sex toys. Them little vibrating plastic dicks with knobs on 'era, like old cucumbers. Look here."
    He pointed to something in the ashes: two large batteries lying in a flesh-colored puddle the shape of a large banana.
    "That's one of them plastic dicks. Just me thinking about that thing being shoved up that old whore's hole makes me kinda woozy. There's some Elvis cards, though. I kicked them aside to let them smoke out."
    "Beg pardon?" I said.
    "Elvis cards." He walked over a ways and kicked at something. It was a charred deck of playing cards with Elvis's picture on the back.
    "The heat gets off of em, I'll probably keep those."
    "Why?" Leonard asked.
    "Elvis is on them."
    "Ah," Leonard said.
    "It ain't the kind of music you people listen to," Cantuck told him. "My wife, she thinks Elvis is God. She'll like them cards, burned or not. Now what the fuck you want?"
    "We're looking for a friend of ours," I