“Come on, Judge,” I said. “Get a grip on yourself. This is only a gambling debt.”
“Sure,” he replied. “That’s what they all say.”
Dead Meat in the Fast Lane: The Judge Runs Amok . . .
Death of a Poet, Blood Clots in the Revenue Stream . . .
The Man Who Loved Sex Dolls
We pulled into a seedy trailer court behind the stockyards. Leach met us at the door with red eyes and trembling hands, wearing a soiled cowhide bathrobe and carrying a half gallon of Wild Turkey.
“Thank God you’re home,” the Judge said. “I can’t tell you what kind of horrible shit has happened to me tonight ... But now the worm has turned. Now that we have cash, we will crush them all.”
Leach just stared. Then he took a swig of Wild Turkey. “We are doomed,” he muttered. “I was about to slit my wrists.”
“Nonsense,” the Judge said. “We won Big. I bet the same way you did. You gave me the numbers. You even predicted the Raiders would stomp Denver. Hell, it was obvious. The Raiders are unbeatable on Monday night.”
Leach tensed, then he threw his head back and uttered a high-pitched quavering shriek. The Judge seized him. “Get a grip on yourself,” he snapped. “What’s wrong?”
“I went sideways on the bet,” Leach sobbed. “I went to that goddamn sports bar up in Jackpot with some of the guys from the shop. We were all drinking Mescal and screaming, and I lost my head.”
Leach was clearly a bad drinker and a junkie for mass hysteria. “I got drunk and bet on the Broncos,” he moaned. “Then I doubled up. We lost everything.”
A terrible silence fell on the room. Leach was weeping helplessly. The Judge seized him by the sash of his greasy leather robe and started jerking him around by the stomach.
They ignored me and I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening ... It was too ugly.
There was an ashtray on the table in front of the couch. As I reached out for it, I noticed a legal pad of what appeared to be Leach’s poems, scrawled with a red Magic Marker in some kind of primitive verse form. There was one that caught my eye. There was something particularly ugly about it. There was something repugnant in the harsh slant of the handwriting. It was about pigs.
I TOLD HIM IT WAS WRONG
By F. X. Leach
Omaha 1968
A filthy young pigs
got tired of his gig
and begged for a transfer
to Texas.
Police ran him down
on the Outskirts of town
and ripped off his Nuts
With a coathanger.
Everything after that was like
coming home in a cage on the
back of a train from
New Orleans on a Saturday
night
with no money and cancer and
a dead girlfriend.
In the end it was no use
He died on his knees in a barn
yard
with all the others watching.
Res ipsa loquitur.
“They’re going to kill me,” Leach said. “They’ll be here by midnight. I’m doomed.” He uttered another low cry and reached for the Wild Turkey bottle, which had fallen over and spilled.
“Hang on,” I said. “I’ll get more.”
On my way to the kitchen I was jolted by the sight of a naked woman slumped awkwardly in the corner with a desperate look on her face, as if she’d been shot. Her eyes bulged and her mouth was wide open and she appeared to be reaching out for me.
I leapt back and heard laughter behind me. My first thought was that Leach, unhinged by his gambling disaster, had finally gone over the line with his wife-beating habit and shot her in the mouth just before we knocked. She appeared to be crying out for help, but there was no voice.
I ran into the kitchen to look for a knife, thinking that if Leach had gone crazy enough to kill his wife, now he would have to kill me, too, since I was the only witness. Except for the Judge, who had locked himself in the bathroom.
Leach appeared in the doorway holding the naked woman by the neck and hurled her across the room at me . . .
Time stood still for an instant. The woman seemed to hover in the air, coming at me in the darkness like a body in slow motion. I went into a stance with the bread knife and braced for a fight to the death.
Then the thing hit me and bounced softly down to the floor. It was a rubber blow-up doll: one of those things with five orifices that young stockbrokers buy in adult bookstores after the singles bars close.
“Meet Jennifer,” he said. “She’s my punching bag.” He picked it up by the hair and slammed it across the room.
“Ho, ho,” he chuckled, “no more wife beating. I’m cured, thanks to Jennifer.” He smiled sheepishly. “It’s almost like a miracle. These dolls saved my marriage. They’re a lot smarter than you think.” He nodded gravely. “Sometimes I have to beat two at once. But it always calms me down, you know what I mean?”