We made an anonymous call to the police department and they came and got the body, and next day they made a big deal out of it in the papers, about how the cops had done this great detective work.
There was stuff about the murder of Horse Dick, though he wasn’t called that. There was no mention of the fact Raul was found just down the hill from where Horse bought it. But it was pretty clear, if you read between the lines, that Raul had been on the back of the bike.
It wasn’t clear how Horse, between collecting knots from Leonard, ended up with Raul and the two of them had gone riding. But it appeared when Horse got his head blown off, the bike had gone into a tree, and so had Raul, and Raul had hit the tree so hard it had knocked him willy-nilly down the hill and into the vines.
That was pretty much the sum of all that was known.
Two days later Raul’s parents came from Houston and had him buried in a little graveyard out in the country. It was a quiet shady place with Civil War veterans, black folks, and paupers, and for some reason they decided not to haul him home but to have him planted there.
Leonard wasn’t invited to the funeral or the burying, but he went to the burial anyway. The graveyard was on one side of a blacktop road, and there was a cluster of oaks on the other side. We parked beneath them, sat on the hood of the rented Chevy, and watched the service.
We didn’t have on black. We didn’t have on ties. The coffin was bronze. The family was weeping.
The whole thing was over in short time, then the cars filed out. One of the people attending the funeral stood by the fence for a while, started across the road toward us. He was dressed in black, all neat. At first he was hard to recognize without his Hawaiian shirt, cheap suit, and porkpie hat.
“Thought you might be here,” he said to Leonard.
“Yeah,” Leonard said.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “You should have been invited.”
“Family don’t like queers,” Leonard said. “Far as they were concerned, Raul wasn’t queer. He was just a little confused. Any day now he’d quit suckin’ dicks and start dive-bombing pussy.”
“Easy, Leonard,” I said.
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Easy.”
Charlie climbed onto the Chevy’s hood, sat by Leonard. “I wasn’t invited either. Came anyway. Thought whoever did it might show up. You know, like in the movies. Returning to the scene of the crime.”
“You don’t mean me, do you?” Leonard said.
“No,” Charlie said.
“Well, you sure don’t mean me,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Actually, I came ’cause I thought I might see you two. Raul’s body was on Old Pine Road, just down the hill from where Horse Dick bought it. Down there all the time.”
“So we heard,” Leonard said.
“Shits went out there to investigate the site didn’t do much of a job,” Charlie said.
“Boy, that surprises me,” Leonard said. “A dead queer, I thought everybody would be in a hurry.”
“It ain’t one dead queer,” Charlie said. “It’s two.”
“All right,” Leonard said. “Two dead queers.”
“Could it be one of you boys called in about the body?” Charlie asked.
“Could be,” I said.
“Thought so. You boys are too nosey to let something lay.”
“Hey, we did better than you guys,” I said.
“That’s what gets my goat,” Charlie said. “Want a little tidbit, boys?”
“Sure,” I said.
“The two dead queers,” Charlie said. “One of them was a cop.”
We both stared at Charlie. I said, “Well, since it wasn’t Raul, that leaves Horse.”
“See,” Charlie said, “your powers of deduction. Phenomenal.”
“Don’t fuck around here,” Leonard said. “I’m not in the mood. Horse Dick was a cop?”
“Yep,” Charlie said. He reached inside his suit coat, brought out a flattened pack of cigarettes. He put one in his mouth, got out a lighter, and lit it. He said, “He was working undercover.”
“Under Raul’s covers,” Leonard said.
“He was on special assignment,” Charlie said. “Didn’t know it till the other day. It wasn’t part of my business. This was something the chief set up.”
“The chief set up stuff with a gay cop?” I said.
“Didn’t know he was gay,” Charlie said. “Chief knew, guy wouldn’t have been a cop, let alone on assignment. I’d seen the guy around, but he wasn’t part of my action. I didn’t connect the death of the biker with the cop’s death, not until it got to be more common knowledge. It was slow to leak around the department. Chief thought it made him look like an idiot, so he wasn’t blowin’ any trumpets.”
“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” I said.
“Guys are running a lot of drugs through the Blazing Wheel,” Charlie said. “So Chief got Horse… McNee… and that’s another alias. His real name is Bill Jenkins. Anyway, Chief got him to go undercover. Horse got involved with Raul, then he and Raul got dead.”
“You think it had something to do with Horse being a cop, or being gay?” I said.
“Don’t know,” Charlie said, shaking his head as he blew out smoke. “Maybe both. Maybe neither. Whatever, I wanted y’all to know, ’cause truth of the matter is this one may not get the attention it deserves. Cop gets killed in the line of duty, we’re all over it. But, like you said, Leonard, couple of fags, Chief being like he is, seeing this as some reflection on the department and himself… It could fall between the cracks. Might already be there. I maybe can’t do what ought to be done. Get what I’m sayin’?”
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “We get what you’re sayin’.”
“I didn’t really know Raul that much,” Charlie said. “I hate he’s dead, though. I mean, you liked him.”
“Good enough,” Leonard said.
Charlie finished his smoke, climbed off the hood. “See you boys later.”
Charlie went down to his car and drove away.
We sat there for a while watching the grave digger with his backhoe. He threw the dirt in fast and got things tidy, drove the backhoe through a large gate on the other side of the graveyard, wheeled it onto a trailer hooked to a truck. He fastened the backhoe down. He locked the gate up. He drove the trailer and the backhoe away.
Two men took down the striped funeral tent and placed the flowers and wreaths the bereaved had ordered onto and around the grave. They loaded up and got out of there.
We walked down to the graveyard, went through the gate. Walked past gravestones. I read some of them. Civil War dates. One worn stone bore the faded words BELOVED SLAVE AND SERVANT chiseled on it, which I thought was kind of ironic.
One said JAKE REMINGTON, adding, NO RELATION TO THE ARTIST OR THE GUN MANUFACTOR OF THE SAME LAST NAME. There was a Jane Skipforth, who died in the early 1900s, FROM COMPLICATIONS WITH MEN. A Bill Smith, who died in World War I. HIS PLANE WENT DOWN, BUT HIS SPIRIT SOARS. A Frank Jerbovavitch, who got old and died. A Willie, no dates, just Willie. A Fred Russel, just dates. No mention of his relationship to the famous western artist of the same last name.
And so it went. But it really didn’t matter what was said or wasn’t. Now they were all brothers and sisters under the dirt.
Leonard stood at Raul’s grave, said, “Somehow, it don’t mean nothin’, a grave. Just like when my uncle got buried. He’s dead, and that’s all there is to it.”
Leonard kicked some dirt onto the grave and we left.