Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  Ryan recoiled against the truck’s cargo bed door, looking even slighter than usual. Fisker liked watching the glow of the lighter flame shining in both the boy’s eyes.

  “There’s two things in the world, son, two things and only two: assets and liabilities. You’re either one or the other, and there’s nothing in between. Something you need to know: your mother didn’t run off, like I told you. That was a lie. She was a liability. Got busted for drugs and sold me out to avoid prison time. I guess she didn’t know I had friends in that jail who let me know what she was up to.”

  Fisker let his words settle in before continuing, liking the pain that had sprouted on his son’s face. Wouldn’t surprise him if the kid started bawling his eyes out, crying for his missing mommy.

  “Every time I look at you, I think of her. The two of you are alike in every damn way, including being a pain in my ass.”

  “What’d you do to her?” Ryan asked between raspy whimpers, the gasoline dripping off his hair and clothes.

  “Had her deposited in a junkyard compactor, after I strangled her. Because she’d become a liability.” Fisker flashed the lighter in front of his son’s eyes. “Just like you. So look into my eyes and tell me I won’t do it, son, look into my eyes.”

  “Dad,” the boy whined.

  “Look into my eyes!”

  Ryan did, using all his will.

  “You think you’re strong, you think you’re tough, because you can scare a bunch of wetbacks who are scared already. But you can’t scare a punk kid your own age who stood up for them. Maybe I can make a trade with Cort Wesley Masters, you for his boy straight up.” His gaze lifted over Ryan to the dinged-up truck. “Hell, I’ll even throw the truck in, as is. Sound fair?”

  “I’m sorry, Dad, all right? I’m sorry,” Ryan managed, his voice cracking and spittle trailing the words from his mouth. “What do you want me to do?”

  Fisker moved the lighter’s flame so close to him, he thought his son’s clothes might catch. “What I tell you. I want you to do what I tell you. But you didn’t do that this morning, so I’ve got no reason to believe you’ll do it now.”

  “I’ll fix the truck!”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “I promise!”

  “I hope you’re not talking to me, son, because I don’t give a shit.” He flicked the top of his father’s lighter back into place, extinguishing the flame. “You’re a liability now, and until you show me something that proves different, I’d avoid open flames at all costs. Because you’re gonna wear those clothes for a while, until I tell you to take them off, undies included. Something to remind you of the difference between assets and liabilities.”

  “You’ll see,” Ryan said, holding his face so rigid, his chin stuck out like a blade.

  “What am I going to see exactly, son? Enlighten me, please.”

  His son’s jawline straightened to a rigid block, making him look more like Cliven Fisker than his dead mother. “You’ll see,” the boy repeated.

  PART FIVE

  The Rangers have given the people of Texas protection from redskin, Mexican raider, frontier robber and desperado, mob violence and the more modern forms of defiance of law and order. They have not done so without leaving many of their comrades on the field of battle. Their record has brought glory not only to the Rangers themselves but to all of Texas. The Ranger has become symbolic of the heroism with which Texas has been carved from the wilderness. For these things, the Ranger deserves the high place of honor given him.

  —The Dallas Morning News; August 24, 1936

  42

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Captain Tepper was smoking a cigarette, boots almost as old as he was propped up on the desk before him, when Caitlin walked into the room.

  “You know, I tried to retire last year, Ranger.”

  “Really?”

  Tepper nodded and eased his boots back to the floor. “Uh-huh, for the third time, actually. And Ranger headquarters in Austin gave me the same answer each time: no. Know why? Because they knew no one they put in my place could handle you. Hell, not that I’ve been doing a very good job at all in that regard. Did you really violate a direct order from our friend Jones?”

  “He’s not our friend and since when did you start taking his side?”

  “Since it became a matter in Homeland’s purview, not ours.”

  “You’re talking about Kelly Ann Beasley.”

  Tepper rocked forward in his chair. “Who you went to see, even after Jones warned you not to.”

  “He didn’t give me a reason.”

  “He didn’t think he needed to, beyond whatever it was he said he told you.” Tepper shook his head and stamped out the remainder of his cigarette in a heavyweight ashtray he kept chained to his desk with a computer cable so Caitlin wouldn’t steal it. “Man actually thought you were going to take his words at face value and go merrily on your way.” He gazed at his pack of Marlboro Reds, as if he were already longing for another. “Hey, notice anything, Ranger?”

  “Besides the fact that your office smells like a barroom before smoking was outlawed in them, you mean?”

  “I was talking about the fact that I put the cigarette out when it was halfway done. See, you’ve had more of an effect on me than you thought. I only smoke half of each one I light up now. Give me some credit.”

  “You think that’s going to put years back on your life, D.W.?”

  “Take less of them off, anyway. Look, Caitlin, I’m deeply appreciative of you doing your best to keep me alive, but both of us know your interests are self-serving, since you don’t want to have to break in a new commander by ignoring his orders, too.”

  Caitlin sat down in the chair in front of Tepper’s desk and put her boots up on the edge. “Doc Whatley picked up the story of my granddad investigating that POW camp murder.”

  “Is that a fact? Where’d he leave off?’

  “At the Driskill Hotel, where the body of a man believed to be working for Standard Oil was found.”

  “Named Abner Dunbar, as I recall.” Tepper nodded. “Here’s what happened next.…”

  43

  AUSTIN, TEXAS; 1944

  Earl Strong left the crime scene in the able hands of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, and rode the hydraulic elevator down to the lobby, marveling at the way the cab operated. A black man wearing a uniform like a train porter’s sat on a stool working the controls. Going up and down all day, every day, the floors the cab opened onto always the same. Earl found himself wondering if he’d be better off in a line of work more like that, and tipped the man a dollar after he’d slid open both the grate and door itself.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Keep up the good work.”

  From the elevator, Earl went straight to the Driskill Hotel’s front desk, making sure his Texas Ranger badge was in full view of the clerk.

  “You got the registration card for Abner Dunbar?” he asked.

  “Sure do, Ranger. That FBI man asked me to pull it and I’m holding it right here for him, if you want to take a look.” The clerk lowered his voice. “Did you know it was J. Edgar Hoover himself?”

  “Is that a fact?”

  The clerk fished the registration card from a drawer and slid it across the desk. It listed a Dallas address in Dunbar’s scratchy scrawl, above where he put Standard Oil as his employer. Earl Strong slid a ten-dollar bill across the shiny countertop in its place.

  “The Driskill’s such a busy place, it’s not hard for a little registration like this to go missing,” he said, watching the clerk’s eyes widen at the sight of the bill.

  “Happens all the time,” the man said, covering it with his hand and making the ten dollars disappear with a magician’s skill.

  “Something else you need to know,” Earl told him, feeling the need to explain a clear indiscretion for a lawman. “Those folks from Washington upstairs are no friends of Texas. They’re here purely to suit their own interests and would shit on the Lone Star flag
itself if it furthered their cause. They’ve got no claim to that registration card or anything else.”

  “What registration card would that be?” the clerk asked him, grinning.

  DALLAS, TEXAS

  The address Abner Dunbar had listed on the registration card took Earl Strong to a modest bungalow on the outskirts of Dallas at the virtual meeting point between country and city. It was the kind of tract home rented by the case lot by oil companies to house their workers who came and went based on the whims of the pumpjacks that dotted the horizon, churning day and night.

  That made Earl wonder if Dunbar’s employment with Standard Oil might actually be real and not a ruse, as he checked the windows and doors in the hope of finding one open. When he didn’t, being no good at all when it came to picking locks, Earl scooped up a rock from the garden and hammered out a windowpane on the back door. Then he carefully reached through the jagged breach and unfastened a chain lock before popping open the door lock and entering the kitchen.

  The thing about kitchens was that, in Earl’s experience, they always smelled of something. The residue of cooking odors clinging to the paint, wallpaper, and appliances maybe. It was always there, as much welcoming as sad, given how often Earl paid visits to homes of those already deceased.

  Like Abner Dunbar.

  He checked the refrigerator and found it virtually empty, save for a couple bottles of pop and some sticks of butter. Closing it, Earl started from the kitchen into the living room area, passing by a pair of doors leading into identical bedrooms when a man’s shadow shifted against the far wall. That was enough, instinctively, to tell Earl where the man behind the shadow was standing, and he spun around the half wall without breaking stride.

  He saw the revolver before he saw the man holding it, jerking his whole arm upright, just as the man pulled the trigger. The deafening roar blew air through Earl’s ears and rained ceiling plaster downward. Earl punched the gunman in the face with his free hand, then hit him a second time for good measure. He noted a mustache below a pair of ice-blue eyes already glazed over, as the man slumped down the wall he’d crashed into, his shiny, pressed suit squeaking the whole way.

  Earl stuck the revolver, the kind the British army used, in his belt and handed the kerchief he always carried in the event of a dust storm down to the man, whose nose was currently gushing blood. “You FBI? Did J. Edgar Hoover send you?”

  The man looked up at him, his eyes coming back to life. Earl anticipated any number of things happening next, though not what actually did.

  While holding the kerchief firmly against his nose to stanch the flow of blood, the man extended a hand upward to shake Earl’s. “Captain Henry Druce, British Special Air Service,” the man said in the thickest British accent Earl had ever heard. “Nice to meet you, Ranger.”

  * * *

  Earl sat in a stiff-backed fabric chair, facing the couch on which Henry Druce sat, currently easing his ID wallet back into his pocket. The vinyl material was stiff beneath him and Earl thought he spotted the tag from a local furniture store still protruding near one of the couch’s arms.

  “So I guess this means the FBI didn’t send you,” Earl told him.

  “You mentioned Mr. Hoover in particular,” Druce said. “Might you have crossed paths with him already here in your state?”

  “At the scene of a triple murder in Hearne on the grounds of one of the German prisoner-of-war camps we got here in Texas. But I’m guessing you already knew that.”

  “And what would be the basis of such an assurance?”

  “Can’t say. It’s what my gut told me. What my gut isn’t telling me,” Earl continued, “is whether your presence is connected to Abner Dunbar’s murder.”

  Druce’s face flashed genuine surprise. “Dunbar was murdered?”

  “Unless he cut his own throat and then managed to hide the knife, he sure was. In Austin at the Driskill Hotel, where the pipsqueak J. Edgar showed his face again.”

  Druce nodded, processing the new information Earl had just provided. “And this hotel, would it be in reasonably close proximity to the camp in question?”

  “Austin’s the only city in spitting distance and the Driskill is the first choice of many who visit the city.” Earl leaned forward. “That was your turn, now it’s mine. What’s a captain in the British SAS doing in Texas on the trail of a murdered man on Standard Oil’s payroll?”

  “The same thing as you, I fully expect, Ranger: chasing criminals, though quite a bit different ones in my case.”

  “How’d you get in?” Earl Strong asked him.

  “I picked the front door lock.”

  “Never my strong suit.”

  “So I gathered when I heard the glass break.”

  “You saw me coming?”

  Druce nodded. He was a dapper-looking man with a neat mat of helmeted hair—the same color as his mustache—plastered to his scalp. His skin was pale and Earl recognized his eyes, now that they weren’t glazed in pain and shock, as a gunman’s or, in this case, a soldier’s.

  Captain Henry Druce kept the kerchief pressed against his nose, as he resumed. “I heard your truck first. It alerted me somebody was probably coming.”

  “So here we both are, in what looks to be the temporary home of a dead man. I’m here because the cut across his throat matched the cuts that killed the three bunkmates of an escaped German prisoner named Gunther Haut. That name mean anything to you?”

  “Not in itself, Ranger. It’s Abner Dunbar I tracked here to Texas.”

  “All the way from England?”

  “Me, yes. But Mr. Dunbar hails from Chicago. He is, in fact, employed by Standard Oil in their international department, specializing until a few years back in a specific country.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Earl said, leaning back again. “Germany.”

  * * *

  “You weren’t actually in the war. Would I be correct in that assumption, Ranger?”

  Earl nodded, slightly embarrassed by the question he got a lot, as if he’d let down the country while remaining in Texas. “I got so much shrapnel in me already, Captain, I figured others could share in the wealth. And I believe you’re suggesting Abner Dunbar is a German spy, bought and paid for by the Third Reich. Have I got that right?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes”

  “What manner would that be exactly?”

  “A spy, to me, implies someone who infiltrates an army or government in order to steal secrets. That doesn’t describe how the late Mr. Dunbar earned the money deposited into a Swiss bank account at all.”

  “What does, Captain?”

  Druce pulled the now sodden kerchief from his face and touched his fingers to his nose to make sure it had stopped bleeding. “We need to back up a bit first.”

  “How far?”

  “I was speaking figuratively.”

  “I’m about as good at speaking that way as I am with picking locks, so I’d rather you just lay it out for me.”

  Druce continued checking to see if his nose was still bleeding, and returned Earl’s kerchief to his nostrils when he saw it was. “The war in Europe is effectively over, and Germany lost. I say it that way, because it’s inevitable, and the smartest and most cunning Nazis are planning for that inevitability by circling the wagons, to use American vernacular, and racing to preserve their most vital human assets.”

  Earl smiled and shook his head. “Now that’s a mouthful.”

  “It also explains my job, which is to prevent that from happening.”

  “Keep the Nazis from preserving those vital human assets.”

  “That’s right.” Druce nodded. “I’m the commanding officer of something called Operation Loyton. Its purpose is to track down Nazis, many of whom are already in the wind.”

  “But not all.”

  “No, not all.”

  “And I’m also guessing that some of these vital human assets ended up in American prisoner-of-war camps. Say, Gunther Haut, for example.”

&n
bsp; Druce nodded again. “You’re a smart man, Ranger.”

  “Smart’s got nothing to do with it, Captain. The director of the FBI shows up from Washington and now here you are all the way from England. Even a dumbass ought to be able to figure out neither one of you would’ve come all this way for our great weather.”

  “It is a touch hot, I must say.”

  “Summer’s coming. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  Something changed in Druce’s expression, Earl figuring he was seeing the man’s core for the first time. “Oh, I’ve seen plenty, Ranger, and I wish I could forget plenty of it.”

  “Doesn’t work that way, though, does it?”

  “No magic bullet I’ve been able to find yet.”

  Earl stood up to stretch a bit and remembered Druce’s revolver was still wedged through his belt. He eased it free and handed it back to him.

  “Yeah, well, Captain, in my estimation a bullet’s only good for one thing anyway. And we were talking about how it is that Operation Layton brought you to Texas.”

  “A small number of these high-value assets, as we’re calling them, are currently interred in several prison camps across your state. We believe it was Abner Dunbar’s job to make contact with them and, whenever possible, facilitate their release.”

  “You mean escape.”

  Earl watched Druce hedge for the first time. “It’s political.”

  “What is?”

  “War, to begin with. Ever read von Clausewitz, Ranger?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “Von Clausewitz once wrote that, ‘War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy by other means.’”

  Earl didn’t bother to pretend he understood a word of that. “I’d like to get back to what brought you to the United States, if we could.”

  “I just explained that.”

  “Sure, about how this now-deceased Dunbar fellow was responsible for taking care of these high-value Nazi assets, some of whom are currently interred on Texas soil. But only one of them, Gunther Haut, murdered three fellow inmates and then proceeded to kill the man you’re suggesting to me was supposed to be helping him. You want to tell me how that jibes with your thinking, Captain?”