Things Get Ugly by Joe R. Lansdale

Author:Joe R. Lansdale [Lansdale, Joe R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories (Single Author), Crime, Small Town & Rural
ISBN: 9781616963965
Google: 5k5gzwEACAAJ
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Published: 2023-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

Standers Considered, deCided either way he was screwed. He didn’t tell, he was going to suffer, then die. Maybe he told what they wanted, he’d just die. He could make that part of the deal, and hope they kept their side of the bargain. Not that there was any reason they should. Still, Mulroy, he might do it. As for Babe, he couldn’t trust her any kind of way.

Nonetheless, looking at her now, she was certainly beautiful. And his worms-eye view right up her dress was exceptional, considering Babe didn’t wear panties and was a natural redhead.

“I was you,” Mulroy said, “I’d start talking. Where’s the loot?”

Standers took a deep breath. If he’d only kept his mouth shut, hadn’t tried to impress Babe, he wouldn’t be in this mess.

During World War II his dad had been assigned to guard Nazi treasure in Germany. His dad had confiscated a portion of the treasure, millions of dollars’ worth, and shipped it home to East Texas. A number of religious icons had been included in the theft, like a decorated box that was supposed to contain a hair from the Virgin Mary’s head.

Standers’s father had seen all this as spoils of war, not theft. When he returned home, much of the treasure was split up between relatives or sold. After the war the Germans had raised a stink and the U.S. govern-ment ended up making Standers’s dad return what was left. The Germans offered to pay his father a price for it to keep things mellow. A flat million, a fraction of what it was worth.

Divided among family members, that million was long gone. But there was something else. Standers’s Dad hadn’t given up all the treasure. There were still a few unreturned items; gold bars and the so-called hair of the Virgin Mary.

Early last year the Germans raised yet another stink about items still missing. It had been in the papers and Standers’s family had been named, and since he was the last of his family line, it was assumed he might know where this treasure was. Reporters came out. He told them he didn’t know anything about any treasure. He laughed about how if he had treasure, he wouldn’t be living in a trailer in a cow pasture. The reporters believed him, or so it seemed from the way it read in the papers.

A month later he met Babe, in a store parking lot. She was changing a tire and just couldn’t handle it, and would he help her. He had, and while he did the work, he got to look up the line of her leg and find out she wore nothing underneath the short dresses she preferred. And she knew how to talk him up and lead him on. She was a silver-tongued, long-legged slut with heaven between her legs. He should have known better.

One night, after making love, Babe mentioned the stuff in the papers, and Standers, still high on flesh friction, feeling like a big man, admitted

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