by A. W. Gray
“We got to keep these guys under our thumb,” Lincoln said. “Frank Nichols done nine burglaries, you know that? Nine that we know of, all these people done a hell of a lot more than what they got caught for.”
“Yeah, he was pretty good at it,” Lackey said. “We got a little office you know, right off Loop 820 and Rufe Snow Boulevard in North Richland Hills. One morning I lost my key and old Frank got in there without even leaving a mark on the door frame.”
“Keeping in practice,” Lincoln said. “Most of „em do.”
“Yeah, whatever. I sure got no beef with Frank Nichols. I’d like a hundred like him.”
“That’s good,” Lincoln said, “as long as he wouldn’t like to have a hundred like you, you’re letting him off during the day to steal a few TVs or something.” He reached for another file. “Here’s another nice one. We go from a burglar to a dope peddler, Ramon Gomez. You got a lot of Mexicans out in that neighborhood, don’t you?”
Lackey thought of Nancy, and pictured himself grabbing Lincoln by the collar and hauling him across the table. And saying to Lincoln, “Yeah, and one of them is my fiancée.” Lackey had lost his racial hangups in the service; he’d noticed, though, that black guys as a rule seemed to be more into race than the white people Lackey knew. He decided he’d better not start anything more with Lincoln than he already had. Lackey swallowed. “Well, yeah,” he said. “Not a big Hispanic population, but some. Ramon sold some marijuana. So what? I think they ought to decriminalize it.” Then he felt like biting his lip, and waited for Lincoln to let him have it with both barrels.
Lincoln didn’t change expressions. “It’s what marijuana leads to. Don’t you know anything about drugs? You need to, in case one of your employees shows up high. This Ramon Gomez, he’s likely to do that. Believe me, I can spot „em.”
Lackey’s jaws clenched. “Ramon never took a hard drug in his life. Nothing but a little grass, and he was a teenager. For that he got to spend three full years in the joint, on a twenty-year sentence. Tell you the truth, I think that’s ridiculous.”
Lincoln stacked the two files together in front of him. “Well, we don’t. We think these guys should do more time than what they’re getting. Instead of putting them on the street for us to have to fool with.”
“Murderers, yeah,” Lackey said. “But not some guy selling grass.”
“I don’t know about your attitude, Ferguson,” Lincoln said. “Don’t know if a man with your attitude should be working convicts to begin with. They need somebody that’ll keep an eye on „em and let us know if they’re fucking up.”
Lackey was mentally kicking himself. Here he’d come to reason with the parole people, now he was arguing with the guy over whether marijuana should be against the law. “Hey, Mr. Lincoln, I’m not here to give anybody any trouble,” Lackey said. “Our problem is pretty simple. If these guys start taking off two days a week it’s going to murder our work schedules.”
“That’s something I can’t do anything about,” Lincoln said. “My duty’s to keep the screws on these parolees. Every day in the paper there’s something, one of these guys holding up a convenience store, raping a woman or something.”
“We don’t have any sex criminals,” Lackey said. “We screen their record before we’ll take „em on the payroll.”
“You just don’t have anybody that’s been convicted of it. Most of these guys get their kicks raping women. That goes with the other stuff.”
Lackey couldn’t believe the fucking guy. “Well listen,” he said. “None of our people have ever been in trouble on parole. Can’t we make a deal that, well, as long as they behave themselves they don’t have to come but once a week? You think you could help us that much?”
“Oh, I’m making a change,” Lincoln said. “After talking to you I’m making a big one. I’m going over every one of these files on your people. Then I’m going to have „em come three times a week, all the ones I don’t make quit your outfit altogether.” He grinned. “How’s that grab you, Ferguson?”
Lackey swallowed, not wanting to say anything to upset the guy further, but finally not being able to help it. Lackey’s complexion reddened; the cords on his neck stood out. “Well, it doesn’t grab me too good, tell you the truth. Tell you what, who’s your supervisor around here?”
7
Lincoln’s supervisor was a fat white guy named Sullivan. He told Lackey that it wasn’t his policy to interfere with his people. Furthermore, Sullivan said, while what the Parole Board did wasn’t always in the parolees’ best interests, the Board’s policies were best for the public in general. Sullivan then gave Lackey a business card and showed him the door.
Lackey drove back to the jobsite doing a slow burn, jamming a Ronnie Milsap tape into the player with an extra hard shove and turning up the volume on “There Ain’t No Gettin’ Over Me,” all in an attempt to take his mind off of Lincoln the Parole Officer. A lot of people had told Lackey and Ronnie that they were asking for trouble when they began hiring ex-cons; what the people had forgotten to say was that the trouble wasn’t from the parolees themselves.
Frigid air drifted from the pickup’s vents as Lackey made the climb-and-bend to the left on Loop 820, crossing over Airport Freeway, then whipped across two lanes of seventy-mile-an-hour traffic to take the northbound exit onto Grapevine Highway, finally halting at the traffic light on the access road. There was a Kip’s Restaurant on his right; in the restaurant parking lot the grinning statue of the Big Boy held a giant hamburger on a plate aloft. Directly in front of Lackey, across Grapevine Highway, two men wearing jeans walked around on Hudiberg Chevrolet’s used car lot, kicking tires.
So what do we do now? Lackey thought. All of the parolees were doing too good of a job to let any of them go, and the budget wouldn’t stand hiring any more people to take up the slack caused by the extra parole visits. Lackey had been planning to put on an extra crew for the westside bathhouse job, but Mrs. Hardin’s killing had changed all that. For maybe the hundredth time since his discharge, Lackey wondered if he’d have been better off staying in the army. Nope, no way. He wouldn’t have Nancy.
The traffic light flashed green. He turned right onto Grapevine Highway, then immediately fought across two traffic lanes to make a left, headed north on Davis Boulevard. He steered the pickup several more blocks, between a Taco Bell and a Big State Auto Parts, finally turning left on Lola Lane. The jobsite was on Lola, a couple of blocks west of Davis, across the street from a one-story grammar school in a neighborhood composed of small brick veneer and wood frame homes. The guy whose house they were remodeling was a plumber; Lackey figured that with the hourly rate plumbers were getting, the guy could afford it. He pulled to the curb at the jobsite, then paused with one hand on the pickup’s door handle. What in hell was going on?
A Tarrant County Sheriff’s car—a metallic blue four-door Impala with rooflights and a wire screen separating the front seat from the back—was parked in front of the house. Jesus, Lackey thought, now Lincoln’s sending somebody over to hassle these guys on the job. Well, that was something that F&F Construction couldn’t put up with, a cop standing by while the men were trying to work. Scare the neighbors to death is what it would do. No way could they put up with that, things were bad enough as it was. Lackey got out, slammed the door with a thud that rocked the pickup, then took long purposeful strides across the lawn and around to the back of the house, ready to give somebody a ration of shit.
Frank Nichols, Ramon Gomez, and three other men—a black named Daniels and two Hispanic guys named Begorria and Nunez—stood off to one side of the addition, talking in whispers and shooting glances toward the two plainclothes cops who were listening to Ronnie Ferias. Ronnie was standing on top of a mound of excavated dirt, his glossy black hair riffling in the wind as he held his hard hat in one hand and gestured with the other. His jaw was working nonstop as the two cops stood by, one with folded arms and the other with hands on hips. The county men wore white shirts and dark ties,
were coatless, and had holstered pistols hanging from their belts. There were badges pinned to the holsters. Both of the cops were tall and rangy, one bald with a sunburnt scalp and the other with a full head of blond-going-to-gray hair. The bald guy wore mirrored sunglasses. The blond’s complexion was fair, reddening in the sun, and he was squinting.
As Lackey approached, Ronnie was saying, “. . . and can’t be more’n a half hour or so. I thought he’d be here by now, tell you the truth.”
“We got enough trouble keeping these people occupied without all this,” Lackey said. “So what are you guys after?”
The bald sheriff’s deputy was holding a photo. Light flashed from mirrored lenses as he looked at the picture, raised his head to give Lackey the once-over, then lowered his gaze to the photo. “Ferguson? Lackey X. Ferguson, that you?” There was an I’m-a-county-man twang to his voice, and a slight hoarseness, as though he had a hangover.
Lackey bent his head for a look. Hell, it was his army release picture, taken at Fort Bragg. “Well . . . yeah,” he said.
The blond beckoned with a crooked index finger. “Come over here, Lackey,” he said, then led the way about twenty paces off to one side, near the back porch of the main house. Lackey followed, wondering what the fuck was going on, conscious of the bald deputy falling into step behind him, of the stares from Ronnie and Frank and the other construction workers.
The blond folded his arms and waited for Lackey to catch up. Then, when he and Lackey and the guy with the mirrored lenses formed a triangle, the blond deputy said, “I’m Detective Morrison. This guy’s Henley. Where were you at yesterday, Lackey?”
Normally, Lackey liked it when people called him by his first name, but Detective Morrison sounded like a guy talking down to the hired help. Lackey folded his arms, spread his legs, and looked at the ground. “Why you want to know?” A gnawing uneasiness was creeping up the back of his neck, a feeling as though he shouldn’t say anything to these guys.
Henley, the bald deputy, snugged his glasses up with his middle finger. “We’ll ask the questions here.”
Lackey cocked his head. “Well, you might ask „em. But I’m not answering any till I know what’s going on.”
The deputies exchanged looks, then Morrison said, “You know a Percival Hardin?”
“I might,” Lackey said.
“Cute,” Morrison said. “Maybe you’d answer better if we all went downtown.”
“I might do that, too,” Lackey said. “But unless you got a warrant we’re not going to find out.” All of his life he’d done his best to cooperate with the law, but that morning’s session with Lincoln the Parole Officer had changed Lackey’s attitude. He’d had it up to here with civil servants throwing their weight around.
Henley smiled a smile that appeared painted on, and that didn’t make Lackey particularly trust the guy. “Say, Lackey,” Henley said, “we’re looking for help. Now I know you seen the TV, somebody killed Mrs. Hardin yesterday and did some things to her that aren’t very pretty. So you were out at that house yesterday, no point in denying it. How about it? Come on down and give us a statement. Unless you got something to hide, you got nothing to worry about.”
There was a sudden weight in Lackey’s belly like a football-size rock. All in all, Lackey Ferguson had had better days. “I need a lawyer?” he said, then immediately wished he hadn’t. If he hadn’t done anything, why would he be worried about a lawyer?
“Calling your lawyer’s up to you,” Henley said.
“Aw, I don’t guess I need one,” Lackey said. “Sure, whatever’s going to help. My pickup’s out front. I’ll follow you.”
“That’ll be fine,” Henley said, stonefaced.
Lackey went over to tell Ronnie where he was going. Ronnie’s brow was furrowed and his worried gaze darted back and forth between Lackey and the two cops. “Nothing,” Lackey said, then cleared his throat and said, “Nothing to worry about. I’m going downtown with these guys to give „em a statement about what I saw out at the Hardins’ house yesterday. Be back after a while.” Ronnie pawed the ground with his foot and didn’t look reassured.
Lackey led the cops toward the front of the house. As they passed by the construction workers, Ramon Gomez said, “Don’t tell „em chit, boss. Anything you say they just try to turn aroun’ on you. I been there.” He favored Morrison with a nasty stare.
“One thing about it, Lackey,” Henley said. “You got plenty of advice without even calling a lawyer.”
The county coffee was lukewarm and too strong. Lackey had a couple of sips and set the cup aside. Instead of taking him to the sheriff’s department, in the same building as the county jail, Henley and Morrison had led him an additional block down Belknap Street to the District Attorney’s office. Lackey didn’t know if that was good or bad. At the moment he was sitting at a conference table in a big room with bookcases filled with legal volumes—the Texas Penal Code, the United States Code, and the Federal Reporter, Second Edition—and Henley and Morrison were seated across from him. The bookcases were dusty and the beige walls slightly yellowed. Henley was smoking a filtered cigarette. Lackey didn’t like the smell of smoke and was about to say so, but just then a man came in. The newcorner carried a smoldering cigar in one hand and a briefcase in the other. Lackey closed his nasal passages and kept his mouth shut.
The man with the cigar was around thirty years old and wore a navy blue suit. He was medium height—five-ten or so—with short sandy hair, was squarely built and had some baby fat in his cheeks. He found an ashtray on a file cabinet, set it on the table and balanced his cigar on the edge of the ashtray. Then he snapped his briefcase open, pulled out a file folder, and sat down. The folder bulged with papers and was held together by a jumbo rubber band. The new guy nodded to Henley and Morrison in turn, then said to Lackey, “I’m Assistant District Attorney Favor.”
Lackey rose and extended his hand. “Lackey Ferguson.”
Favor regarded the hand distastefully, then shook it weakly and let go in a hurry. “Sit down, Mr. Ferguson. Anybody tell him his rights?”
Lackey had started to sit down, but now froze with his hands on the arms of his chair. “Hey, I’m not under arrest or anything.”
“No,” Favor said. “We don’t arrest anybody until we’re sure. But I’m telling you that you don’t have to talk to us. Any statement you give here is voluntary, and if you want your lawyer present you can call him.” He had mild green eyes. Unlike the detectives, this guy wasn’t giving out any bullshit.
Lackey sank down into his chair. “Does that mean I’m a suspect?”
Henley inhaled and blew cigarette smoke across the table. “Hey, Lackey, everybody’s a suspect in something like this. Like I told you, nothing to worry about.”
Favor popped the rubber band from the file, then rummaged through the papers inside. He dug in his briefcase and came up with a pocket-size recorder, set it on the table and turned it on. Seen through plastic, tiny reels began to turn. “The recorder’s so we won’t have to take notes,” Favor said. “You got any problem with that?” He lifted thin blond eyebrows.
Lackey didn’t believe Henley, that there was nothing to worry about, but if he balked at the recording things were going to look even worse. “No, I don’t mind,” Lackey said.
“Good,” Favor said, then turned slightly so that he was speaking directly at the recorder. “It’s May twelfth, Nineteen-ninety”—he checked his watch— “and it’s one-forty-two p.m. This is Assistant District Attorney Wilson Favor, and I’m conducting an interview with witness Lackey”—Favor glanced at a sheet of paper from the file—“X. Ferguson, white male, D.O.B. three-fourteen-fifty-five. Also present are Detectives Charles Morrison and Roscoe Henley of the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department.” He nodded to Lackey. “Okay, you ready?” Favor said.
Lackey shrugged and his lips formed what he hoped was an innocent-looking smile. “Sure. Shoot,” Lackey said.
“Okay,” Favor said. “Yesterday did you go to t
he home of Mr. and Mrs. J. Percival Hardin III?”
“Yeah. Yeah, sure, I went over there to see about—”
“That’s my next question,” Favor said. “Please don’t anticipate. Now, what was the purpose of your visit?”
Lackey scratched his head. “I’m in the remodeling business. Me and my partner.”
“Who is . . . ?” Favor said.
“Ronnie Ferias. We’re F&F Construction. I was answering an ad in the paper. They said they wanted to build a bathhouse.”
“It was Mr. and Mrs. Hardin’s ad?”
“Yeah. Yes,” Lackey said.
“And what time did you get there?”
“Well, the first time it was around nine in the morning.”
Favor glanced first at Henley, then at Morrison. “You went there more than once?” Favor said.
“Yeah. The first time I talked to Mr. and Mrs. Hardin in their sitting room.”
“Pretty nice place, isn’t it?” Favor said.
“Yeah. Yeah, sure, it’s nice.”
“Ought to have made quite an impression,” Favor said.
Lackey hesitated. He’d heard from Frank Nichols and the rest of the parolees that D.A.’s and detectives liked to say things that would trip a guy up. Finally, Lackey said, “Well, the impression was at first that all this must really cost a lot. I was wondering how those people could afford to live there, tell you the truth.”
A half-hour later, Lackey was thinking that his interview had gone pretty well. Favor had asked all of the questions while Morrison watched with sort of a strange grin on his face and Henley lit one cigarette off of the other, grinding the butts out in an ashtray at his elbow. Lackey’s eyes were watering from the smoke. He’d answered the questions thoughtfully and in a straight-out manner. He hadn’t told any lies, but also hadn’t mentioned that Mrs. Hardin had been sort of coming on to him.
“I guess that about wraps it up,” Favor said. “Anything else you recall, anything at all that looked unusual to you?”