“I could always eat popcorn,” I said.
The video crackled and popped and there were ripples. Jim Bob started to get up to make the popcorn, but he hesitated. “Looks like a bad copy.”
“You'll want to turn it off to make the corn anyway,” I said. “This stuff with the big spaceship at the first is pretty fine.”
But there were no credits and no Stars Wars. There was bad video camera work with a young Mexican girl sitting on a bed with her hands and feet tied.
“What the hell’s this? This ain’t Star Wars is it?”
“No,” I said. “It looks like some sort of cheap porno tape.”
Then the big Mexican Jim Bob had fought stepped into the camera’s eye. He was naked and sexually ready and looked even bigger without his clothes.
“Shit,” Jim Bob said, ” b said, home movies of the Mex and his old lady.”
The Mexican went over to the girl and pushed her back on the bed and undid the binding at her feet and spread her legs and got on top of her. The girl didn’t fight.
She was very complacent. Only her eyes suggested she didn’t like what was happening.
The Mexican didn’t waste any time, and when he finished he stood up by the bed and another man stepped into view. He was naked too. He was a head shorter than the Mexican and not nearly so wide and sporting a little paunch, but he still looked powerful. The camera angle switched then and we got a closer look at his face. He had thinning, blond hair and blue eyes and nice teeth and he was showing all of them. The camera went back to its original side-view angle and the blond man got on the girl and did what the Mexican had done. When he was finished he grabbed the girl by the hair and pulled her to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and she let out a little squeak like a mouse with a brick on its tail. The blond man put out his hand and a hand off camera put a little revolver in it. The girl understood suddenly what was going to happen and she tried to lift her bound hands to her face but the man with the gun was too quick and he shot her in the forehead. Blood leaped out the back of her head and went all over the bed and she fell back in it with her arms out, kicked briefly with one leg like she was jump starting a motorcycle and wet herself. The urine pooled under her and blended with the blood and her left eye rolled up in her head and her right stayed fixed as if it had discovered something unique on the ceiling. The camera went close on her face and the hole in her head was tiny as the width of a dime with a bead of blood pushing out of it. The blond man’s face came into view and he licked the bead away and rolled it around in his mouth as if tasting wine.
Static replaced the picture. Jim Bob reached out and cut the video off. He turned to me and his voice was hoarse. “That was for real. An honest to God snuff film.”
“He’s older, heavier, and losing some hair,” I said “but he still looks like his photograph, and when he took the gun-”
“The moles on the back of his hand were shaped like a four-leaf clover.”
31
“Don’t say anything to Ben,” Jim Bob said. “Not yet.”
He got the cassette out of the machine and turned off the television. He went over to the bar in the kitchen and got a pen and paper and wrote a note.
“I’m telling Ben we’ve gone to town for some beer,” Jim Bob said. “You and me got to talk.”
He put the note on the table and took the cassette with him out to the garage. We got in his black Dodge pickup instead of the Bitch. We backed out and drove along through the night with the cassette lying between us like a bomb. We didn’t talk for a time.
“Maybe it wasn’t real,” I said. “It could have just looked real. They can do anything now.”
“It’s okay to be hopeful, Dane,” Jim Bob said, “but there’s no use in being stupid. It was real.”
We drove on in silence until I said what{we were both wondering. “What about Russel?”
“Poor bastard can’t get a break, can he?” Jim Bob said. “It isn’t like he hasn’t gone through hell. And now this. Ain’t nothing could be worse than having your kid get killed, unless it was finding out he wasn’t a human being.”
“What’s it all about, though? Why would he do that?”
“You’re having a stupid attack again. Freddy enjoys it. Did you see his face? You don’t lick blood out of a gunshot wound unless you enjoy it. And I bet he’s gone into the movie business kind of regular. Stars himself and the Mex and some little gal that won’t be missed much. My guess is he brought her from across the border somehow. Smuggled her over. Some whore he paid, told her he was going to take her to a big party, and all she had to do to make an extra couple thousand was fuck a few of his friends. Only it was rougher than that. Christ, how old was that gal, Dane?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen?”
“Yeah. That’s about what I figure. I bet that ain’t the first gal he’s aced or the last. Tapes like that he can sell to the sicko trade for big bucks and be reasonably safe about it. Them ain’t the kind of films the owners invite the neighbors over to see. That crap is for sick shits to sit in the dark and jack off to.”
“Jesus, people would pay to see that shit?”
“Live in the real world, buddy. There’s people who’ll pay to see anything. Buy tapes of girls shitting in each other’s faces, dogs fucking them in the ass, or just what you saw. We ain’t talking stuff for an Elks smoker here. I heard of a rich man once on the other side of Houston that bought tapes of operations, animal experiments and war atrocities, and he could do that legal. I wouldn’t doubt he’s got some stuff like we saw on this here,” he touched the tape with a finger as if poking a monster to see if it were dead, “in a vault somewhere. Maybe that’s how he gets it up so he can fuck the old lady. He can pretend he’s gonna shoot her after he gets off-”
“I get the picture,” I said.
Jim Bob pulled off to the side of the road suddenly, as if his hands wouldn’t hold the wheel anymore. He held them out to me and said, “Shit. You look at that? I’m shaking like a virgin bride.”
We sat there for a time with the motor running and the lights on, and Jim Bob said, “We could ditch this tape, tell Russel I fucked up on the Fred Miller stuff, that my FBI contact was full of bull doodoo, and that it wasn’t a cover for Freddy after all. I could pretend to look some more, and after a while, give up. Say I couldn’t find any leads. He needn’t never know.”
“I wouldn’t believe that story if you told it to me,” I said. “Not after knowing you just as long as I’ve known you. You wouldn’t give up. You’re too egotistical.”
“True.”
“But even if we could get away with doing that, that wouldn’t change what we saw or what Freddy’s doing, would it?”
“No. He’d keep right on keeping on.”
“Does that matter to you?”
“Damn sure does. I think the scumbag ought to be tied to the highway and have a semi-truck driven over his head.”
“So what do we do?”
“Damned if I know,” Jim Bob said.
We drove on to town and got the beer and when we got back Russel had the couch folded out and was sitting up in bed smoking a cigarette and watching the tail end of the news.
“Got some beer,” Jim Bob said, holding it up.
“That’s nice,” Russel said. He looked at me. “And you went with him.”
“Yeah, I went with him.”
“For beer?”
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said, “beer.”
“What are you two homos really up to?”
“Beer,” I said. “Can’t a man go out and get a goddamn beer without being hassled?”
I walked past the couch and went to my room and closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed. I thought about the tape and the young girl and the Mexican and Freddy. I thought about the gun and the blood and the urine. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about anything. I wasn’t good at that.
I thought about Ann and Jordan, but that made me more ill than comforted.