Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale

“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