Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale Page A

out of your mind?” he asked.
    “I’m not sure one way or the other.”
    “I can believe that. You have to have those shots, Hap, or you will die.”
    “Come on, Doc, I got five days before the next one.”
    “What about the insurance problem? You forgot about that?”
    “Can’t you fudge a little? I had to leave the hospital. It wasn’t by choice, but I had to.”
    “Why?”
    “I haven’t done laundry in days.”
    “You went home to do laundry!”
    “I had some bills to pay.”
    “Why don’t you just say you needed to wash your hair?”
    “Well, it does need it.”
    “Hap, listen here. You come back to the hospital tonight and stay, and I’ll work something out. But you got to be there tonight. I can rig something for you being out of the room a while. Say I had you over at the office for tests, but that’s as far as I go. Doing something like that, getting caught, I could lose my license, and I don’t think you make enough to support us both.”
    “Not in the style to which you are accustomed. Fact is, I don’t make enough to support
me
. In any kind of style.”
    “You be in the hospital tonight, and I promise I will have you out of there within two days, and still make the insurance work. It’ll take some finagling, but I’ll do it. Just to get you out of my hair.”
    “Got you.”
    “I will be by the hospital at eight-thirty tonight, Hap. Be there. In bed.”
    “In one of those little gowns?”
    “You bet.”
    “Shall I wear a little perfume?”
    “Please do.”
    “I think you just want to see me naked, Doc.”
    “It’s all I think about.”
     
    Leonard came in with a scrub brush full of hog shit, a pail of stinky water, and a couple of towels.
    “These towels weren’t the good stuff, were they?” he asked.
    “Not anymore.”
    “They have holes in them.”
    “Yeah, and the bad towels have more holes in them. You clean the mess up?”
    “Yeah.”
    We went out back and Leonard dumped the water on the ground and used the water hose to clean the brush and towels. He hung the towels on my clothesline. He said, “I’ve been hesitating to ask. But what about Raul? Charlie know anything about him?”
    I shook my head.
    Leonard said, “That worries me. I hope he’s all right.”
    Leonard’s voice would have sounded calm to anyone who didn’t know him, but I caught the tremolo there. He was not only worried, he was scared. Maybe not for himself, but certainly for Raul.
    “He’s probably all right,” I said.
    “Maybe you could check around. Just to see. It’s not like I can go out and look for him.”
    “I wouldn’t know where to start, Leonard. He may have run off back to Houston. He’s done that before, right?”
    Leonard nodded.
    “I figure him and Horse Dick had a fight,” I said, “and he went away, then you stepped into the picture a day late and a dollar short and got your ass in a crack with all this business. Right now, way I see it, and you better believe me on this, Raul is the least of your worries.”
    “I guess you’re right,” Leonard said. “Just forget it.”
7
    But that wasn’t the end of Leonard’s wheedling about Raul. He worked on me for an hour, and since nothing else was shaking and our time was ticking away, I decided if I could locate Raul I could find out better what this was all about. Raul might have some idea who would want to kill his new boyfriend, and if he did, that could lead to placing Leonard in the clear.
    I also decided that if I was going to start looking, I had best do it before the net was put out for Leonard. For all I knew, some cop other than Charlie had already put two and two together and they were seining for my buddy at this very moment. Even Charlie, if put in the wrong position, might have to break his promise to me and cast the net himself.
    I left Leonard with a glass of milk, a bag of vanilla cookies, and a sad expression, drove into town and over to his place. I thought if I was Raul, I might go to Leonard’s