Geoff leaned back on the greasy leather and laughed and said, yeah, it’s about time, and laughed some more and grabbed for the bottle but before he could put it to his lips, Tony’s hand on his wrist brought it down with the gentleness of a louvered door.
Ignoring all this, Marisol said, “Maybe it’s a phone number. I’m going to call it—I mean, we’ve got to try everything at this point.”
Geoff heard himself say, With a 000 area code? You’re wack, and then darkness and then his own bed and he dreamt of a white room where Eileen wrote on a chalk board and his dead wife Janie rocked their infant son whose heart beat he could hear in echo, and Janie told him they were okay and it would all be okay as Joey Kincaid stood in a corner and wept.
Chapter 16
Stepping out of the courthouse annex, Bobby spotted Tasha Carter walking along the square and waved. She crossed over to him.
“Heading for lunch, deputy?”
He met her gaze. “You want to join me?”
She responded with nothing more than a little nod and upturned lips. Walking under awnings and lampposts that spoke of more prosperous years on the square, past Steptoe’s Hardware and a ramshackle antique store and empty storefronts, to the little café—the only place left to eat downtown now that both drugstore lunch counters had closed—he watched her hair, a perfect glistening wave.
They ordered iced tea and looked at menus they had pretty much memorized.
“How’s our big case coming?” Bobby asked.
“Well, you know the preliminary hearing was yesterday. Both Tatum twins pled not guilty. For now they’re both staying mum. Of course, you know the forensics puts their truck at the scene. And I do think the DNA will come back a match.” She paused and peered up at him over the table. “But then, there’s a bit of a problem with that.”
“What is it?” He leaned back in his chair.
“They’re identical twins, so their DNA’s identical. If it’s a match, we’ll still have no way to know which one of them was there.”
“They were both there. When they’re not in jail or on a rig, they’re never apart.”
She grinned at him with eyebrows raised. “Might not be so easy to prove in court.”
Looking down to the table, he bit his lip. “Shit. Fucking lawyers.” Then, moving his gaze back up to hers, “No offense. I meant the other kind.”
She laughed silently, leaning her head back so her neck touched the back of her chair. “None taken. But seriously,” she paused and narrowed her eyes, “I think I can figure out a way to deal with it.”
“Good.”
Their food arrived—a club sandwich, a cheeseburger, corn chips. They ate for a while in silence, and then Tasha said, “If they have any sense at all, they’ll try to cop a plea in exchange for life once we put the DNA on the table.” She took a sip of tea and leaned in close and licked her lips. “And between you and me, we’d take that deal. We’re not going to have a trial if we can help it. Politically, a trial might help my boss—assuming we would win. But for some reason—again, on the down low—Robert Duchamp has taken a real interest in this case. I mean, I know everyone has, and he’s always wheeling and dealing—he won’t countenance any black eye on this town. But still, he’s really pressuring the DA to get this case off the docket with a warm body or two in Huntsville.”
Bobby was glad she had not brought up his rushed arrest, the questionable search. He said, “The Speaker’s been talking to the sheriff, too.”
Tasha smirked. “I’ll bet his conversations with my boss are more pleasant than his with your boss.”
“I know that’s right. They hate each other. But really, I think they see eye to eye on this case, truth be known.”
“You should hear my uncle go off on Duchamp.”
“The Rev? He’s all right.”
She patted her lips and threw her napkin down with a little too much force. “When he’s not fighting fifty-year-old battles, anyway.” Bobby saw a harsh light in her eyes, a cynicism befitting a much older woman. “But the DA and Duchamp are tight. Which means it’s part of my job to keep Duchamp happy.”
•
Bobby and Tasha continued to meet for lunch in that little café over the course of that week, a surreal period in the wake of the murder and the protests and the odd refracting glare of cable news attention. And Bobby began to look for sideways glances from the café’s regulars—though he never saw any.
But one day he said, “Good thing I’m a lawman, or else we might get called in for threatened miscegenation.”
Shaking catsup onto her plate, Tasha did not look at him. “Oh, stop it. It’s not 1950 anymore.”
“It is for some of these yokels. After the Bordelon murder—”
“Backwoods cretins. They exist in some form everywhere.” She looked at him. “You don’t have much respect for your own people, Bobby. Why stick around?”
Bobby shook his head and scanned the room. My people? “I tried to go off to school, wanted to make it to the city. But my mother got sick—breast cancer, in and out of remission. And my poor ol’ dad’s half nuts. I’m an only child—someone’s got to look after them.”
She half smiled at him. “That’s quaint.”
Bobby didn’t smile back “Okay, then. What are you doing here? I know you’re Reverend Carter’s niece, but you didn’t grow up here, right?”
“We left when I was six. My dad, he’s in politics. Got in with the governor at the time, Mark White, this was in the ‘80s, and we moved to Austin and that’s where I grew up. Went to Spelman and loved Atlanta. Then Yale Law.”
He looked at her over the rim of his over-sized plastic glass, feeling the ice cubes gather on his upper lip. “That’s pretty sweet. So why’d you come back the this shitburg?”
“Yale was a blast,” she said. “And I considered staying back east. But there’s too much family in Texas. So I moved to Houston—clerked for a federal judge, then took an associate position at a big law firm. Great pay, but I hated it. Poring through boxes of documents for twelve hours a day just to help one corporation screw over another one.”
“Okay.”
She laughed. “You see right through me, don’t you?”
He was not sure that he did. But then she leaned in close and said with narrowed eyes, “I do have an angle. Hargrave’s going to run for the Court of Criminal Appeals as soon as a promising seat opens up. I may not be ready to take his place immediately, but I do expect to move up …”
“And run for district attorney? In this county?”
“Just as a stepping stone.” She must have caught his incredulous look, gave him a sly grin in return. “What? You don’t think a black woman could do it?”
“I’m not saying that—”
“See, you’re thinking I would run as a Democrat, on my uncle’s name. That would never work. I’d get ninety-nine percent of the black vote but only, maybe, twenty percent of the whites—tops. No more than forty percent of the total. But as a Republican … Duchamp might be dead nationally but his machine still has a lot of power locally. With his and Hargrave’s endorsement, I’d have a good shot in the primary. Then, in the general, siphon off a nice hunk of the black vote from the Democrats to make up for losing the racist wing of the Republican party, and I’m home free.”
She smiled. He grinned and grunted and shook his head back, admiring her acumen. He did not begrudge her opportunism and realized then that her budding relationship with him was an outgrowth of that opportunism—she saw him as just a local redneck maybe a little smarter than the rest who had had a recent star turn on national television. Someone she could use and enjoy. And someone with the sheriff’s ear—a local political figure with whom she had little pull. He felt he could muster enough self confidence not to let this bother him. We both have to take what we can get in this shitburg.
•
On the first hot day of the year, Bobby walked to the courthouse annex after lunch, and as he wiped his brow in the glare with
his good arm, a joyous commotion on the lawn compounded his disoriented feeling. The protestors danced and sang to the sounds of odd percussive instruments Bobby did not recognize, and their flowing hemp clothing and colorful banners brought to his mind a medieval fair. The college kids and professional hippies kept their encampment clean, though their sheer numbers had worn the grass to mud. They demanded not only justice for Dalia Bordelon but also an end to racism, an end to poverty and to hunger. An end to war—specific wars and all wars. An answer to all grievances and injustices. On the periphery, their counterparts from the civil rights organizations smiled and swayed to the music but dressed more stiffly and carried serious signs with messages targeted to the case at hand, signaling that for them this was not a vacation or an excuse for a road trip but rather another day on a job that would never end.
Bobby stepped inside the annex intending to stay just long enough to turn in some paperwork before heading back out to his favorite country road to ticket the occasional speeder or illegal trailer, but then he heard the sheriff call from his inner chamber.
“Bobby, get in here and sit down. There may be another angle to this Bordelon killing yet.”
In the conversation with the Sheriff that followed, Bobby learned that his department was not alone in investigating the Bordelon murder, that Geoff Waltz and Marisol Solis were on the case as well.
And unlike Bobby, the sad sack Dallas lawyer and his Mexican P.I. were not convinced the Tatum twins had acted alone.
Chapter 17
Robert Duchamp paced his study and thumbed the digits on his phone with the skill of a teenager, sending encrypted messages to his fellows, fielding their panicked responses, and negotiating with the Doctor’s swarthy factotum, the despicable Prince. Still Jimmy Lee had failed to recover the priceless living product, the little bit of perfection—the culmination of the Doctor’s work. And the work of his grandfather, and of so many visionary men of science before them.
Kathleen walked into his office and he said, “Can’t you knock?”
She paused in the doorway for a split second and then she marched straight to him in her Sunday dress and pearls and heels and slapped him across the face. “I will walk into any room of my own house I damn well please.”
He sat down behind his desk and cradled his head in his palms. “Alright, dear. I’m sorry. It’s just these damn … idiots …” He swept his arm across his desk, knocking trinkets and plaques and photos and a thousand dollar pen set to the floor.
“You calm down. Now, the curator’s dinner is less than a week away. You need to tell me what you want regarding the caterer.”
She was still angry—he could tell by her pronounced West Texas twang. But his shoulders slumped as the rage fell out of him. “I don’t care, Kathleen. Really.”
“Last time you said—”
“I don’t care what I said last time. I might not even be here.”
She raised a long, slender finger to the bridge of his nose, its curved scarlet nail a doubled blur. “Don’t interrupt me. I could care less whether you’re here or not. But you will not let your little business games interfere with our affairs.”
Looking up at her, feeling his strength returning, he said, “These aren’t games. Dear.”
She placed her hands upon his desk and leaned toward him until her face loomed only inches from his own. He smelled her familiar breath, the jasmine in her hair. She said, “I’ve never known what that … partnership of yours is up to, and I don’t care. I do know that Daddy didn’t like it one bit. Never trusted you people and your Eastern money.”
Carpetbagger. That’s what his father-in-law had called his father behind his back. But they shared a common enemy—the Communists, the longhairs. And anyway Robert III had had surpassed his father—had become one with this place. He could out-East Texas anybody.
Robert gazed up at his wife, amused more than annoyed. “Kathleen darlin’—”
“Don’t you use that phony cowpoke crap on me.” She straightened her back and folded her arms. “I’ve got my own life now, Robert, and you’re a political has-been. You need me more than I need you—if you ever want to stage any kind of come-back. So don’t cross me. You hear?”
He tried to look sheepish and she seemed satisfied at that and when she left his mind turned right back to the Group’s problems. He had no doubt poor ol’ Kathleen would always be there for him. Dallas’s top plastic surgeon had fixed her funny nose years ago, and a high-priced trainer kept her middle aged body as toned as a cheerleader’s—but when she looked in the mirror, Robert did not doubt she still saw that homely, shy Panhandle girl he had plucked from the plains thirty years before.
He had bigger worries. He knew that the nosy black bitch must have delivered her stolen prize to her professor in New Orleans, knew that the lady scientist would have recognized its value. And his own idiot had killed her without recovering it. But it hadn’t taken long to figure out whom the professor had worked for—a goddamn ambulance chaser with a bullshit do-gooder save-the-fucking-tree-frogs water pollution lawsuit. Now Hargrave had informed him that the Dallas lawyer had started digging into the case on his own. The D.A. had heard as much from his own assistant, the Carter girl, who seemed to be developing some sort of fling with a sheriff’s deputy.
It didn’t matter who blabbed what—Duchamp had gotten wind of the lawyer’s interest in the case. And the son-of-a-bitch had even hired a private investigator with Spanish name that sounded as fake as a three dollar bill. Geoff Waltz and Marisol Solis. The Speaker snarled as he texted pair’s names, along with instructions, to Jimmy Lee Monroe.
Chapter 18
The valet opened the door for Marisol. Geoff got himself out, took the ticket and then Marisol’s arm and they stepped onto the sidewalk. She wore a short black dress with spike heels—standard uniform for the downtown Dallas club scene. The other women on the street teetered in similar get-ups; their men did them no justice, out like boys with spiky hair and oversized pants. Geoff wore his most modern black suit with a narrow-collared blue shirt open low down the chest.
The club was housed in the basement of a nineteenth-century commercial building that had been a boarded up stone ruin only a year before. They descended the staircase past a refrigeratoresque bouncer bedecked in gold rings and a gold chain and a crisp, loose suit. Inside all was brass and walnut and rhythmic bass and pheromones. They found an empty banquette away from the dj, not hard mid week, and sat and waited for the Prince.
The number Marisol had that horrible night at the bar—the number which Dalia Bordelon weighted with such significance by hiding on a computer drive secreted with her boyfriend days before her death—connected to nothing. Silence, and then a busy signal. But then two days later her cell phone, which she had used to call the strange number, rang.
The voice said: “You called for the Prince?”
“Who is this?”
“Who is this?”
Marisol leapt. “A friend of Dalia Bordelon.”
A pause on the line, and then instructions.
She had called Geoff with the message. By then, he was over the hangover he had earned at Tony’s corner after learning of Eileen’s death, and he had sworn off hard liquor—at least until this case was over.
Now, downtown three nights later, a cocktail waitress approached in tight shorts and boots and a clinging, low-cut shirt, balancing a tray of toxic-looking shots. She leaned down to Marisol’s ear, the tray ever steady, said something, and with her lips almost touching the curve of Marisol’s lobe she moved her painted eyes to Geoff and then she straightened.
Marisol stood and nodded for Geoff to do the same and they followed the waitress past the bar down a cavernous hallway and up an industrial stairway to a fire door. She gestured them outside to an alley that smelled of marijuana and urine and crickets and closed the door behind them.
Geoff said, “Well. It’s a good thing I dressed.”
A black SUV squealed into the alley off Harwood S
treet and Geoff and Marisol moved against a brick wall by instinct, but there was plenty of room and the SUV stopped beside them just long enough for the back door to open and a voice to say: “Get in.”
•
Geoff stuffed his hands in his pocket against the pre-dawn chill and wondered how Marisol managed to look unfazed in her skimpy outfit. They stood in the dark gravel parking lot of a scrap yard on a bluff overlooking the wasted Trinity River bottoms. High voltage power lines soared above them, and headlights hovered over the old concrete viaduct down river heading into Oak Cliff. The SUV that had brought Geoff and Marisol here idled nearby.
The Prince had arrived simultaneously in a separate vehicle, a black Town Car. He spoke with a British boarding school accent and looked Middle Eastern and well bred, a tall, gaunt man in an English suit with his tie in a full Windsor knot almost as wide as his head.
“Are you aware of Operation Paperclip, Ms. Solis? Mr. Waltz?”
Marisol looked at Geoff with raised eyebrows, and Geoff said, “Sure. I think so. The Nazi rocket scientists, at the end of World War II. Our government wanted their expertise. And, especially, didn’t want it going to the Russians. So Truman spirited the scientists over here to work for the military. And they escaped the war crimes tribunals.”
“A morally dubious bargain at best. But those scientists built the American space program.”
“Okay. So?”
“So you are aware of the lengths your government went to to gain advantage during the Cold War.”
Marisol said, “Are you going to tell us what this is all about?”
“Patience.” The Prince paused to light a cigarette. “What do you know about Area 51?”
“Aliens,” Marisol said. “That’s where the feds keep what they know about extraterrestrials under wraps. From the crash at Roswell—”
“That’s all loony conspiracy theory bullshit,” Geoff said.
“A secret government facility; that much is not bullshit, Mr. Waltz. What goes on there is immaterial to your quest. What matters is that you have stumbled onto another such facility. It’s there that you will find your answers.”
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