Free Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale Page A

reported them a half-dozen times. We take them in, they get out, they start over. It’s like fighting back the Philistines with the jawbone of a hamster.”
    “A game,” Leonard said.
    “Yep,” Hanson said. “And there’s a nasty, persistent rumor that some of the cops take bribes.”
    “Naw,” Leonard said. “Say it ain’t so.”
    “All I got to say on the matter is I’m not one of them, and you damn well better believe it. As for your uncle, he fancied himself something of a policeman. You know about that?”
    “I know he was a security guard. That he wanted to work in law enforcement. Wanted to be a detective. I remember he read a lot of true-crime magazines and books, read mysteries. Anything associated with crime. I know he tried to get a job on the police force, but by the time he tried he was too old, and before that, they weren’t gonna have no black man on the LaBorde cops.”
    “Trust me,” Hanson said, “it ain’t no bed of roses now. We still got the legacy of Chief Calhoun.”
    “As I remember,” I said, “in the late sixties the first Chief Calhoun gave his cops six feet of looped barbed wire with a wooden handle and told them to use it on some civil rights folks, a peaceful assembly downtown. He had his cops hit the protestors with the wire. Women and children. The town council was so broken up about it, they issued all the cops new batons and brought some martial arts guy in to show them how to use them. The batons left more legitimate marks.”
    “That Calhoun was before my time,” Hanson said. “But his heritage lives on. Fact is, except for the rhetoric, chief we’ve got now, his son, makes the original Calhoun look like a liberal. I’m the only black on the police force, and it’s not because they want me. Calhoun sees me, his stomach hurts and his dick shrinks up. A nigger with a gun makes him nervous, makes him dream of white sheets and burning crosses. Worse, I’m a former city nigger, a concrete and neon jigaboo. Add insult to injury, I been here nearly ten years and I’m still an outsider, and last but not least, I’m a good cop.”
    “And modest,” I said.
    “That’s my most pronounced trait,” Hanson said.
    “You didn’t invite us to lunch for this either,” Leonard said, “to tell us you knew my uncle and the department thinks you’re a nigger. You damn sure didn’t bring us here to tell us what a good cop you are.”
    “I’m not sure I brought you here for any reason makes sense. I wanted to ask some more questions, kind’a.”
    “The sphinx would make more sense than you do,” Leonard said. “You haven’t asked a question one.”
    Hanson sipped the bad coffee without removing his cigar, said, “I don’t have any reason to doubt your uncle committed this murder.”
    “Hey,” Leonard said, “thanks for the news flash. But I’m gonna tell you something. My first impression was same as everyone else’s. But I’ve thought on things some, and my uncle could be an asshole, but he didn’t kill any kid. I knew him better than that. There’s something else to all of this, I don’t care how it looks.”
    Hanson shrugged and spread his hands. “Chester came to the station talking about child killings not so long ago. You know that?”
    “No,” Leonard said. “What do you mean he talked about child killings?”
    “What I’m saying, is there may be more murders, more bodies than this.”
    “Didn’t think you were ripping up my flooring looking for nickels had fallen through the cracks,” Leonard said, “but you still haven’t answered my question.”
    “And if he was murdering children,” I said, “why would he tell you?”
    “Frankly, everyone thought he was nuts,” Hanson said. “I think he was too, toward the end there. As to why would he tell us? Throw us off. A cheap thrill. Or he was trying to prove what a good cop he could be. Uncover the murders, but not turn up the killer.”
    “Which you think was him,” Leonard