Free Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale

any of the cops I knew. He didn’t look like a cop. He didn’t look like anybody I knew, period. He didn’t seem to be watching me.
    The phone booth was next to a 7-Eleven store. I went inside and bought a Diet Coke in a plastic bottle and a bag of peanuts. I drank the Diet Coke down a bit, poured peanuts into it, and went outside. I climbed into my truck and looked in my mirror. The Pontiac was gone.
    Probably just some guy waiting for someone in one of the houses along the street. Or maybe he’d stopped to check a map. Pull his dick. Anything. I had to lighten up. I was starting to be one paranoid sonofabitch.
    I drove away, an eye on the mirror, watching for yellow Pontiacs or low-flying stealth aircraft with radar.
9
    I didn’t go directly home. I was sort of afraid to. I figured Charlie would be searching my place, and if Leonard had heeded my warning, he wouldn’t be there. It might also be better if I didn’t come up on Charlie and his folks going through my underwear drawer. I wouldn’t want to embarrass them.
    I drove downtown and went to the all-day dollar movie and had popcorn. The popcorn was okay, but the movie wasn’t very good. I walked out about halfway through and stopped off at the yogurt joint and had a cone.
    When I finished my cone, I cruised over to the bookshop and looked around the magazine rack. I didn’t see any
Boobs and Butts
there. Where did Charlie find that stuff? I hung around long enough the clerks began to watch me suspiciously. I bought a couple comic books, a
Batman
and a
Spider-Man
, and left.
    When I got home, Leonard wasn’t there. I gave the house the once-over, went out on the back porch, and saw him strolling toward me from the woods. He had the twelve-gauge in one hand, a shovel over his shoulder, and I could see his revolver in the waistband of his pants.
    Leonard smiled. “Thanks for the phone tip. I watched from the woods. Charlie and a blue suit showed up with the sheriff. They worked your lock and went inside and looked around.”
    “That means they have a search warrant.”
    “Probably. They were inside about twenty minutes.”
    “They did good. I can’t tell they’ve been here. They even locked the door on the way out.”
    “They looked around outside too. Found the sheets covered in pig shit.”
    “They take the sheets with them?”
    “No. At this point they probably haven’t put the pig shit and my daring escape together. I was smart enough to bury my clothes in the woods. I was going to do the sheets next. Actually, I don’t think putting me and the pig shit together is going to mean anything anyway.”
    “You’re probably right about that. Something new has happened. Now you’re connected to all this officially, and Charlie had to come check my place as a likely hiding spot.”
    We sat down on the back porch and I told Leonard what I had found at his house. Told him about my conversation with Charlie.
    “Any ideas?” I asked.
    “Was the stuff really wrecked? Were my books ruined?”
    “They’re messed up. Some of them.”
    “The TV’s screwed?”
    “Looks that way. And the stereo.”
    “Shit.”
    “Your J. C. Penney’s suit was tossed on the floor too.”
    “Now that fucker is dealing with dynamite.”
    I nodded. “I knew that would get you.”
    “Seems to me someone thinks I have something I don’t. If I do, I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know how I came by it or why I’d want it. And even if I did, that’s no excuse to fuck with a man’s J. C. Penney’s suit.”
    “Or maybe they think Raul has something.”
    “I hadn’t thought of that,” Leonard said.
    “Or maybe they thought Horse Dick had something, and now they think Raul has it, and they thought he was hiding it at your house.”
    “Or someone thinks what Horse Dick had and Raul had, I now have.”
    “Or maybe it’s a disgruntled hair patron of Raul’s,” I said. “A little too much off the ears and he’s ready to flatten the kid’s head.”
    “Come