AMayhar - The Conjure

by The Conjure (v1. 0) [lit]

  There, hunkered down among the cattails and button willows on the far bank was an old man, who nodded slowly before returning his gaze to the river. Parmelee cleared his throat. It was better to seem natural than stand-offish, he was certain.

  "Pretty hot to fish,” he commented. “But you've got to take the chance when you have time off. Any bass in that hole?"

  The old fellow looked up, and Parmelee was struck by the steely quality of his eyes as he gave another slow nod. “Seen some big ‘uns come out of that hole. But you're not goin’ to do much good today. Too hot.

  "The weather's going to change; you might get lucky when the wind shifts tomorrow, particularly if it starts to rain.” That seemed to be his limit of conversation for the day, because he slid backward and disappeared as silently as any Indian.

  Was that old Choa that people had talked about for so many years? But surely it couldn't be ... this man was white-skinned, under his tan. His eyes were so pale a gray they seemed colorless. It couldn't be Choa, but it had to be one of the few people living here full time.

  Satter Dooley's Pa would be about that age—but no, Satter had said, before he lit out, that his Pa died back around 1989. There'd been talk about the last of the fabled Deports, of course, old King, but he'd be older than sin, by now.

  This man might look older than the river itself, but he moved like a much younger fellow. Still ... it might be King Deport.

  Now what would he be doing out on the river bank, when everybody knew his land stopped a good half mile short of the river? He didn't associate with people, it was said, so it was unlikely he'd come down to chat with the fishermen.

  Reeling in the last of his line, Oscar laid his rod in the bottom of the boat and took up the paddle again. There was nobody in sight now; he'd best make time while he had the chance. The sluggish current was no help as he moved downstream, and he went too slowly for his taste, feeling as if some hidden watcher might be staring at his back.

  Although he passed no more fishermen farther downriver, it took longer than he liked to find the tributary that would lead him to the creek he was seeking. By the time he turned off into the narrow creek mouth, it was near sundown, and he knew he'd never find it again in the dark. The flood had changed the contours of the creek, as well as bringing down trees from its banks.

  You'd never know there had been high water now, he thought, as he pulled his fiberglass boat up onto a low bank and prepared to camp. Talc-like dust rose around him in a cloud, making him sneeze. Might as well leave the boat here tomorrow, he realized, for already the creek was too low for easy boating, and it was faster to walk the bank than to carry the boat over the shallows.

  Though he had been raised along the river, Oscar had scorned the woodsy life early and moved away to town. He remembered a lot of things and a lot of places, but now the easy familiarity his father and cousins had with the critters that lived there had deserted him. The screech owl in the sweetgum overhead made his skin crawl as it whimpered into the growing darkness, and the distant quarrels of bobcats did nothing to reassure him.

  He put up his umbrella tent, built a skimpy fire to heat water for instant coffee, and chewed disconsolately on cold canned pork and beans. This wasn't the way he wanted to live. That was why he took up drug running—it was the only way he'd ever found to make a lot of money fast.

  But it turned out—he should have known it would—that the big guy sitting at the top of the heap, never taking a chance, raked in the big bucks, while Oscar Parmelee sat on a creek bank and swatted mosquitos. If he didn't locate that stash, of course, he'd have worse things than mosquitos to worry about. That same big guy at the top had ways of punishing those who didn't deliver the goods.

  He zipped himself into his tent, knowing too well that any black bear or cougar wanting a taste of him could open it with one swipe of powerful claws. He didn't sleep much, and when the mockingbirds and cardinals tuned up at daylight he crawled out, tired and grumpy, and rebuilt his fire. Without coffee, he was going noplace fast.

  An early hawk wheeled overhead, and hoot-owls were talking back and forth in the distance. He preferred the sound of traffic and gunshots, the pressure of other people close around him ... people he understood and could kill without thought or regret.

  Animals were unpredictable. He'd tried to kill a dog once ... the thought made him sigh. Never try to shoot a dog in the brain, he'd learned. No brain to speak of. Get him in the heart, that was the only way. Which said something about dogs, he suddenly realized. More heart than brains.

  Leaving his tent set up but putting out the fire with great care, now the woods were so dry again, he set off upstream. He followed the bank as closely as tangles of willow and birch trees, as well as blackberry and rattan and smilax vines, would allow, keeping a lookout for the cutbank he wanted. It was a long way from the river, he knew too well.

  The sun rose, and the heat trapped under the canopy of trees soon drenched him with sweat. His hat collected moisture under the band, and he had to stop frequently to wipe his face and neck with his bandana.

  He was still very big and very strong, but he found he'd gotten out of condition somewhere along the way. Soon he was stopping to rest much too often.

  He did, however, find the place he searched for before mid-afternoon. The big hickory overhanging the stream was unmistakable. Though the flood had washed out even more soil beneath the high bank, he knew this was the spot where he had left the stash and his two companions.

  Now he rather regretted killing them. If they still lived, they would share the blame, if things went all wrong.

  Grunting, he climbed down the powdery bank, holding onto thick roots bared by the action of the flood, and stood in knee-deep water where there had been really deep water before. Bending, he peered into the darkness behind the tangle of roots.

  Of course the bodies were gone—already found and noted and bringing their own set of problems. But surely that weighted ice chest couldn't have floated away.

  The thought of messing around in that hollow, where he was certain he could see gleams of scaly bodies where moccasins lurked, filled him with gloom, but it had to be done. He pulled off his shirt and pants, took the flashlight from his back-pack, and broke off a long, straight sapling. Where you had snakes, you needed a stick, he had learned at his daddy's knee.

  The stink of the mud, the coffee-colored water, the slimy algae clinging to everything under the bank filled him with disgust. As he entered the hole, he heard a hiss and shone his light into the cottony-white maws of two moccasins, coiled on a shelf of mud at the back of the opening. Their smell of rotted watermelon was strong.

  "You say right there, you bastards,” he muttered. “I don't intend to come anyplace close to you."

  He knelt in the water and felt around with one hand, holding the light on the snakes to make sure they didn't join in the action. Nothing.

  He tucked the flash under an exposed root, still pinning them with its beam, and used both hands to dig frantically in the muck. He even edged much closer to the moccasins than he ever intended to, but there was just nothing there to be found.

  Cursing, he backed out of the hole, wiggled between the roots, and stood again, knee deep in the creek. There was no spot between there and the river that could hide something as big as the ice chest. So if someone had taken it away to hide again, it would be upstream still.

  He wouldn't even consider its having been swept out into the river and away to the Gulf of Mexico. If he trusted to his instinct, he might pick the right directions every time the creek forked or a smaller one joined the big one.

  He kept going, though he longed to get back to his tent. Sleeping on the ground or in a tree was nothing he had ever found acceptable, even when he was young and ignorant. But leaving his home country and starting over again in some alien place wasn't what he wanted, either, so he moved on, scanning both banks with intense care.

  He had seen only two very young alligators along the way, as he c
ame. When he came to a deep bend, where the current branch of the creek looped back on itself, almost creating an island of mud overlooking a deep-looking hole of water, he stopped short. His heart lurched, and he felt bile rise in his throat.

  On that mud bank lay a half dozen big gators, their lazy eyes opening as he came into sight. The biggest, a male some twelve feet long, opened his mouth and gave a grunt. Then he began to move toward the water, hissing like a teakettle.

  Oscar recalled something else from his childhood. Never try to out-run an alligator on land; the creatures could catch a man, over a short distance. In the woods you can't get up much speed.

  Even as he thought, the gator crossed the waterhole with four powerful strokes of his tail and started up the slope toward him. The speed it made on those short, crooked legs was awesome. It might be more curious than hungry, but Parmelee had no intention of finding out.

  He went up the overgrown persimmon tree behind him as if he were still a boy, shinnying up eight feet to the first branches. Then he squirrelled up through those to the highest point that would hold his weight. From there he stared down into the marble eyes below.

  After a time, the rest of the gators joined the big bull, and they all lay down under the tree for a rest. They had done this before, and sometimes they had been rewarded for their efforts with a snack.

  CHAPTER XIII. Death and Taxes

  Stephen Parker wasn't satisfied with the outcome of his assignment in Nichayac County. He felt there was still work to be done there, though he had no intention of returning in person. The thought of those slanted black eyes gleaming at him through the car window was enough to insure that.

  He kept worrying at the problem until he came up with something concrete that he could do. The IRS was always interested in people who claimed to make no money. That Choa fellow must, if his claim were true, have failed to file returns, possibly ever in his life. That would interest another federal agency—one that had cleaned up more than one mess in the interest of collecting money due to the government.

  With something like a smile widening his thin lips, he picked up the phone and made the call. His contact on the other end of the line had helped him out before. George was no man of action, but he could get information out of the antiquated IRS computer system faster than anybody.

  "No idea of his Social Security number?” George asked, and Parker could hear the click of keys as the man began to work on his keyboard.

  "His name is Choa, which is probably his last name. They call him Possum, but that can't possibly be his first name. No idea of his number. Can you access this with so little information?"

  There was a hail of clicks. Then George said, “Sorry, old chum. Cannot do. I need more time. If I can check old files, maybe get in touch with somebody down there on the ground, I should be able to get what you want. We'll see. Call me in two days."

  It was more like a week, for Parker was assigned a small task in Oklahoma City, which he carried off with his usual efficiency. That reassured him that he hadn't lost his edge, and when he called George again he was feeling like himself again.

  It took only a moment for George to pull up the information he wanted. “Name's Edward Choa, SS number 451-50-9922. He began filing income tax forms, and paying taxes, too, in 1950 when he worked for Schlumberger in Houston. Made good money for about ten years. He was married, but his wife didn't work.

  "He moved back to Nichayac County in 1960. Address was a post office box in Lanford, which doesn't even exist any more. They pulled its post office in 1978, and after that he got his mail, according to our records, care of Lena McCarver on a rural route out of Templeton.

  "He kept filing forms, though he claimed he had no income. About 1987 he filled out a form saying he didn't have to file any longer and stopped.

  "According to the records, Agent Phyllis Latham was sent to check him out, when there was no answer to any of our letters. She went to the address of this McCarver woman. When she filed her report, she said nobody down in that country made any money to speak of, and all the neighbors said Choa made his living by fishing and trapping and trading for food. She closed the case then and there, and nobody else ever felt it was worth following up on."

  Parker could hear confusion in George's voice. Seldom did the Service close out a case until they got firm proof, one way or another. But he understood, fully and completely, why Phyllis Latham had fixed it so she wouldn't be sent back down there to that gray house and that frightening old woman.

  "Dead end, then,” he sighed. “But thanks, anyway."

  "Not so fast. I showed this to my supervisor, and he felt it was worth reopening. Hasn't been a filing since, and we all know nobody can live on nothing a year. We seem to have a good case for going down there and investigating this old man in depth.

  "It may not be much, but with interest and penalties, if he owed ten cents to start with he'll owe a big sum now. With all the pressure to balance the budget, that ought to go down well with the bigwigs at the top."

  Parker grinned. “Good work, George. I think that Choa guy has to be involved with drug-running, too, so you can maybe catch him on taxes where we can't touch him on our own beef. Let me know what happens, will you?"

  He hung up the phone with great care. Then he turned and stared out the window at the other wing of the office complex. By God, he was going to get that fellow yet. And, if there was any way to do it, he'd try to catch that old McCarver bitch in the same sweep of the net.

  * * * *

  If there was anything Ranse Cole hated it was federal agents, of whatever stripe. No sooner was he rid of the DEA bunch than here came the Internal Revenue people, bugging him about Possum Choa, of all people. He'd told them all he knew, which he could see they didn't believe. That made him angry, too.

  The bastards had the nerve to threaten, very subtly of course but unmistakably, that if he didn't cooperate—which he read to mean lie—to suit them his own taxes might get audited. He didn't turn a hair.

  His cousin James, a CPA in Dallas, had done his taxes for years, just to thwart any such blackmail on the part of the local power brokers or the Feds. Whatever his other faults, Cole knew he paid all his taxes and could prove up on all his deductions.

  This Rambard fellow and his partner had come in, arrogant and assured like all federal agents, and proceeded to make Cole, Myra, and Deputy Philips so mad they could have spit tacks. With wicked amusement, Ranse Cole sent them out to meet Lena McCarver.

  He'd never met her himself—had taken good care not to—but that was the only address they had for Choa. He felt that if anyone deserved to get crossways with that dangerous old woman, Rambard and his nameless partner were the ones.

  As he leaned back, breathing deeply to get his heart-rate back into order, he thought about young Mike Kramer, even now busily delving into the courthouse computer system. Might the boy be able to look intofederal files? Seemed he'd read about somebody getting into the Department of Defense, and that had to be more secure than the tax system.

  He buzzed for Myra. “See if young Mike can spare me a minute, will you, Hon?” he asked. “I need to ask him a question or two."

  When Kramer ambled into the office, his long legs and gawky elbows taking up more space than one human ought to, Cole greeted him warmly. “You're doing good work, boy,” he said. “I think you're about to find out what I need to know. What you found out about Har ... that fellow I asked you to check up on came in handy. I think I know who his big boss may be. You found any trace that somebody's been tapping into our system here?"

  "You kidding?” Mike said. As usual when talking about his specialty, he flushed scarlet, making his ginger colored freckles turn almost purple. “There's been more outsiders poking into your system than insiders, if I'm any judge. You need better security codes. And you need to restrict the number of people who know ‘em to ones you know can be trusted. There's somebody in our area code here who regularly snoops into the system.

  "I foun
d where some of the commissioners have been changing their mileage records, too, gettin’ about three times what they ought to every month. Those b ... fellows ought to know better."

  "That's just the kind of thing I need,” Cole said. He folded his hands across his paunch and looked down his nose at the young man. “You suppose—we're just talkin’ hy-po-thetically, now—you might be able to hack into the Internal Revenue Service files?"

  Kramer's face flamed even redder, and his grin widened. “That's why I'm in jail, Sheriff. I can break into anything I d ... darn well please, but I got caught just once. Ibeen in the IRS files. Straightened out my uncle's tax mess without him payin’ a dime, but don't tell ‘em that. What do you need?"

  Ranse Cole felt a warmth rise in his chest. He knew he'd been right in pulling this young man out of the county jail. It was a damn good thing the state prisons were too full to hold everybody and the feds were so slow about picking up prisoners. He was going to find out some things he needed to know, and Michael Kramer was going to help him do it.