The Last Second Chance: An Ed Earl Burch Novel

by Jim Nesbitt

  “Your turn to find the ride. They’ll remember me for all the wrong reasons. They’ll remember you, too, but as something they’d like to chase ‘round a double wide.”

  “Jesus, Big ‘Un. Sweet talk.”

  She rolled her eyes skyward. Above her head hung a rusty sign, its letters outlined in neon tubes that had burned out about the time LBJ started showing his surgery scars out in the Rose Garden and pulling beagles up by their ears.

  J&S Cafe.

  The initials of his third ex-wife. He knew where to take it from here.

  Chapter 17

  The voices were squeaky and shrill -- wet fingers drawn across glass -- scratching through the loud, white hiss of a television set jammed between channels, volume up, the electronic blanket of noise he needed to drown out his dreams and let sleep come to him.

  T-Roy squirmed and made a small noise, deep in his throat, like a dog bothered by nightmares and starting to whimper. It is a cry that is always louder in a person’s mind than it is in reality. Until the nightmare rises up through the layers of sleep, pushing the scream along, filling the throat until it fills the room of real life, the ears of the real person sleeping in the same bed or the hallways where the silent men who take the money to guard a life sit and pass the small hours, padding their way to the last door on the left with quick, quiet feet, guns drawn and held high, to see if something is really wrong or if it is just another nightly visitation for El Rojo Loco.

  He wasn’t to the stage of screams and the sudden, snapping arrival of sweaty consciousness. He wasn’t even where you think you’re screaming and screaming and wonder why no one can hear you.

  He was someplace else, somewhere down below the white noise and the ceiling fan stirring the humid air of his room, down where dreams and other things hold you, never letting you rise fast enough to run from them, always making you stay and stay, stuck there in the quicksand of visions and fear.

  He buried his face in a sweat-stained pillow.

  In the vision of sleep, he was hiding from the voices, digging into soft dirt, then dragging a boulder behind him, sealing himself in darkness. The smell of the earth was strong and wet; he held the taste of pennies, clay and water in his mouth. The stone was cold and made his hands turn blue.

  He listened for the voices. He thought they were gone.

  A roar filled his darkness and he was hurtling through earth and stone, rushing through the soft clay and running up against hardness, feeling it open and wrap around him before bursting out on the other side and into more dirt, more granite. They were after him. He heard their voices again, not Spanish, not Anglo, not any language he could think of. Something ancient and lost, something once heard in the land but now gone.

  In a shower of dirt and clay and rock, he broke through the earth’s surface and saw himself at the side of a broad causeway. In the distance, he could see a large city, dominated by flat-topped temples with steep, stepped sides. The city sat in the middle of a lake with this causeway and six others leading to its center.

  Mountains rimmed the valley where the lake city stood. Their peaks were familiar to him, but he couldn’t place them. He spun to the sound of shouts and the steely clash of battle. A troop of men, some on horseback, most on foot, were being forced his way by a larger mass of barefooted men, wielding studded clubs and shields.

  The troop fired wheellock pistols and harquebuses, raking the larger mass of enemy with shot. Crossbow bolts also took their toll, skewering men clad in animal skins and bright plumes of feathers. But the weight of their numbers was telling, pushing the troop back toward a man in the leggings, body-armor and curve-brimmed helmet of a conquistador. The man sat on a large, white horse, its head bowed, its flanks scored with long cuts and flecked with blood.

  “Christians! Rally to me! Christians! Rally to me!”

  A barefoot man wearing the skin and head of a jaguar broke through the troop, sprinting toward the man on horseback, leaping and swinging his obsidian-edged warclub in a glittering arc that ended in a dull, pulpy thud that caved in the Christian’s skull, knocking the helmet to his feet, where it spun in the dust of the causeway.

  A sword was in his hand. He could not move. He looked at his feet. A hand rose from the earth and gripped his left ankle. He chopped at the hand with his sword and cut it through at the wrist. It still gripped his ankle, but he could move now and meet the Jaguar Knight, holding the pulsing heart of the conquistador in one hand and his club in the other.

  The Jaguar Knight tore a hunk of the heart with his teeth, tipping his head back to let the blood run down his cheeks as he chewed and swallowed, his eyes shadowed by the cat head that covered his skull.

  T-Roy ran toward the Jaguar Knight, swinging the blade back and forth in short, whooshing cuts that brought him closer to the smiling face, the skin-clad body and the blood-streaked cheeks.

  The blade chopped into the neck of the Jaguar Knight, neatly severing the head from the body. The head bounced into the air and sprouted another skin-clad body. The other body sprouted another head, capped by a cat skull. Both heads laughed at him.

  He swung his blade at the neck of the new Jaguar Knight. Again, the head was neatly severed. Again, it bounced once and instantly sprouted a new body. Three heads laughed at him. He swung a fourth time. Four heads laughed.

  The laughing heads closed in, speaking their squeaky, shrill talk, laughing at him, spinning him around until all he saw were flashing teeth, cat skulls, spotted skins and one quivering heart, ragged where it had been torn.

  The spinning stopped. He was naked, stooped and climbing a steep set of stone stairs. The lake city was below, the six causeways spreading from the center like a starburst. Jaguar Knights lined the sides of the steps he was climbing. He felt a lash rip his back. The knights pointed at him and laughed.

  A shout from above. Cheers from the Jaguar Knights. A figure at the top of the stairs held a pulsing heart in his hands, raising it to the skies, singing out in that squeaky, shrill voice and ancient tongue.

  Another yell from above.

  The body of a conquistador tumbled down the stone steps, rolling and gaining speed, knocking his feet out, sending him on the same long tumble down the same stone steps. Down to the bottom, where the Jaguar Knights and men in priestly robes tore strips of flesh from the bodies of conquistadors, dipping the strips in chilemole sauce and sucking them down with a loud smack of the lips.

  Hands grabbed him. The Jaguar Knights passed his rigid body up their line of spotted skins, up the side of the stone temple, up toward the flat top and the priests above. He sailed up on their palms, gliding smoothly to where a man stood next to a stone table, his shoulders covered with a mantle of black feathers, his head topped by a parrot mask and a plume of purple and yellow feathers.

  T-Roy was flat on his back, staring at the sky, his cut shoulders rubbed by the rough stone table. Parrot Head flashed an obsidian knife, shiny at the point and cutting edges, dull in the middle of the blade, and spoke the squeaky, ancient tongue.

  The blade disappeared from his sight. He felt a sharp pain below his rib cage and heard the sound of stone striking gristle, a sound he could feel in his skull and teeth. He tried to cry out and couldn’t.

  Parrot Head screamed and held a fistful of bloody pulp where he could see it. His heart, beating and pumping gouts of blood down the wrists of the man who held it.

  Parrot Head held his heart high, toward the sky, toward a shadow that blotted the sun and cried out with a raucous squawk and hiss as it moved closer and grew larger, its features growing clearer, its size dwarfing Parrot Head.

  The hissing grew louder, radiating from the head of a snake with glittering bronze eyes and a shiny, brown skin, flecked with gold. Its neck was ringed with white and brown feathers. Two broad, scale-covered wings spread from its body. It moved closer until it was all that he could see, its tongue, broad and thick, not
thin and split, flicked toward his heart.

  He tried to scream and could not.

  Parrot Head bowed before the winged snake, holding his heart in one hand above him. But it wasn’t Parrot Head anymore. The mask was off. The feathered mantle was gone. It was Mano, offering his heart to the winged snake and its wide, yellow tongue. The tongue scooped up the heart, rolling it back into the mouth. The snake swallowed, closing its eyes. It hovered over him, its head swinging from side to side, its mouth unhinging, its tongue curling out to touch his face.

  The scream started from the hole in his side, moved up to where his heart used to be and filled his throat. The hiss and squawk filled his ears. He tried to drown it out with his own voice, a sound he couldn’t hear, a sound he knew would save him.

  His mouth was wide open, the cords of his neck strained. No sound. He couldn’t get it out of his throat. It stayed there, denying him, wedging itself tight. He needed his screams. He needed to fling them at the mouth and tongue and unblinking eyes that floated so close he could count the scales around the flat, blunt snout.

  He felt the tongue enter the hole in his side. He felt it press below his rib cage. The scream finally broke free, a flood of sound that drowned the hissing and smothered the feeling of something foreign in his body. He couldn’t open his mouth wide enough to get it out. His jaw popped and sent a sharp pain shooting into his skull. The scream rolled on, causing his body to shake and the muscles of his legs, belly and arms to tighten.

  Shaking and screams. More shaking. More screams. Shaking that he couldn’t control and didn’t start. Shaking and Mano’s voice. Screams to drown out that voice and blot out the face of the snake. Mano’s voice breaking through. The snake pulling back, growing smaller in the sky.

  T-Roy felt himself rising through layers of water and oil, slow then fast, bubbling toward the hands that shook his body. His eyes snapped open and Mano’s face floated above him.

  “Jefe, jefe. Jefe, jefe.”

  It took a moment for Mano to realize his boss was awake.

  “Another bad dream, jefe?”

  He nodded and stared at his oldest and only friend.

  “The snake that flies again, jefe?”

  He nodded.

  “That and other things.”

  “What other things?”

  He said nothing. Mano handed him a bottle of mescal. He propped himself on his side and drank until the liquor burned the back of his throat. He looked at Mano.

  “I know you better, my friend. I know who you really are.”

  Chapter 18

  Cider Jones watched Cortez ladle ranchero sauce over his fried eggs, then slice through the yokes with a knife, turning his plate into a palate of nauseating yellow-brown fluid, flecked with chunks of white.

  Cortez dipped a rolled corn tortilla into the mess and bit off the end, following it with a forkful of chorizo. A fat droplet of gruel ran from the corner of his mouth. His cheeks were puffed with food. He tried to talk, but gagged.

  “Chew your damn food, beaner. If you choke to death before you tell me what those Weatherford cops had to say, I will be pissed.”

  “Fuck your -- ackkk, annngh ...”

  Coughing choked off the insult. Cider drained his coffee cup, stuffed a napkin in it and fished the Levi Garrett pouch from his jacket pocket. Cortez gulped some water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Disgustin’ damn habit, breed. And usin’ their fine china as a spitcan. Didn’t mama teach you better than that?”

  Cider said nothing and worked the tobacco into his lower lip. Cortez mopped up more gruel with a tortilla. It was always this way after working a stiff -- he couldn’t eat and Cortez had to stuff his face with huevos con chorizo and corn tortillas.

  Cortez had Burch pegged for both shoots -- Quinones and the triple at Crutcher’s office. Crutcher -- a real dirtbag whoredog. Bad enough to represent these damn dealers, he fronted for them on real-estate deals and aircraft leases and rumor had him dipping in as a not-so-silent partner on the black end of the business.

  Timing screwed up Cortez’s line. Hard for Burch to nip up to North Texas for that Ross shindig, then bop back down to Houston to pop Crutcher and the boys. You could make things fit if Burch leased a Lear.

  Something else screwed it up as well -- the look in Crutcher’s dead eyes. They didn’t tell him about a bald-headed ex-cop, they spoke of something far more frightening, of somebody who truly enjoyed snapping back each and every finger. Like a swizzle stick in a happy-hour highball.

  The redneck lounging in the back of Cider’s mind snorted and sluiced a stream of Redman into the dust. Awright, damn it. Look at it this way, you literal-minded popdick -- it’s hard to image this dog-ass pee-eye in a private jet. Harder still to peg him as somebody’s idea of ideal contract talent.

  True, maybe that was somebody’s bright bulb -- use an hombre who don’t look the part. Kind of like the old slip-by cars moonshiners used to use -- creep past the revenuers in something everyday and ordinary instead of smoking past them in something souped up.

  But those eyes say something different. The redneck shook his head.

  Awright, awright. Either way, the killings are related and Burch was the common denominator. Got to find the boy. Got to get at him before Bonafacio does. Or the feds. Or the Rangers. They were hot for Burch, figured him as some key player in the Ross shootout.

  Got to get Cortez to stop feeding his face long enough to get what those Weatherford cops had to say.

  “What they tell you?”

  “Not a whole helluva lot more. Snitch spotted the Cutlass. Wanted to snag it for himself. Mentioned it to a cop who remembered a want on a Cutlass. Bingo. Found the thing being chopped up by some ex-con up there.”

  Plates matched those seen leaving the Ross rancho; hard to miss a vanity job with a single word like LATER on it. They traced it to the Tejano Leather Company, once the name of an S&M escort service owned by Ross, lately just a place to park registrations on boats and cars found scattered about the dearly departed’s spread.

  “Who?”

  “Some Bubba, chingado motherfucker. Hooter somethin-or-other.”

  Cortez slid a fax sheet across the table. Cider scanned the paper, noting the Weatherford P.D. logo.

  “Did a trey at Huntsville. Been clean since then. But Weatherford cops peg him as a chop-shop operator who supplies clean, but expensive rides to a certain clientele.”

  “Didn’t talk much, did he?”

  “Wouldn’t say mierda. Holdin’ him as an accessory. They did find paper on a bunch of cars scattered around this guy’s lot. Three cars missing. Wants out on those three. All MoPar -- a Duster, a Monaco and a Fury.”

  “He’s ditched it by now. What about the woman?”

  “Cantrell. Carla June or Jean or Sue.”

  Cortez glanced at his notebook.

  “Carla Sue. Ross’s squeeze and errand girl. What’s with these damn redneck Anglos, got to have two first names. Can’t go around like normal people and be called Ed or Earl. It’s gotta be Ed Earl or some shit like that. Pendejos.”

  “Get off the soapbox.”

  “Piss off, breed. “

  “How’s this ex-con tie into Burch?”

  “They don’t know.”

  “We need to.”

  Cider slid his chair back, grimacing as he heard a stuck cartilage chip pop out of his knee joint. Cortez frowned.

  “You ought to get that damn hinge worked on, breed. You limp around like an old man.”

  Cider carried his coffee cup toward the front door. A pay phone hung on a thin post that divided the door and the cafe’s plate-glass window. He called Dallas and got the cop who gave him the Burch backgrounder.

  “Goodson, Wendell Jackson, a/k/a `Hooter.’ DOB 2/13/47. Con. How’s he hook up to Burch?”

  “
Shit, son. That’s his cousin.”

  “Burch got a lot of family?”

  “His mama and daddy are dead. So’s an older brother. Got some cousins scattered around, mostly up here. And his ex-wives. Two or three of them. One’s a real-estate agent in North Dallas. That’s the first one, the one what broke his heart. Ran off with some Jew-boy weightlifter. Burch hates her a whole lot.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Only one I can remember is the last one. Juanita. Can’t place her last name. A real hellraiser. Played pool, liked to fish. Artsy type, though. Sculpture or something like it. Left him for some guitar player down Austin way.”

  “Can you get me a last name and a place? And anything on the others, if there are any?”

  “You bet. Gimme a half hour.”

  Cider walked back to the table. Cortez was frowning at the check, trying to figure out a tip.

  “Have another cup of coffee, beaner. We’re gonna wait.”

  “Good thing. I gotta take a shit.”

  “That’ll take just about the right amount of time.”

  Cider added more golden leaf to the juicy chaw he was already working. Words wormed around his brain -- loner, semi-loser, dogged, grim. An ex-cop on the run. A killer.

  Where do you go for help?

  So far, family. The only family Burch has left -- cousins. Are ex-wives family? Cider’s gut told him ex-wives might be a good bet. There was a certain low-level caginess to it -- what cop would look for another cop at the home of an ex-wife? Almost all of them had one or three and there would be a certain unconscious bias against looking that way.

  The redneck in the back of his mind nodded, working up another stream of Redman. Now you talkin’. A thick dollop of brown hit the dust. Forget that medicine man stuff.

  Guess again, Daddy Popdick. Guess where this idea came from?

  Where?

  Staring at the eyes of Ed Earl Burch’s personnel jacket photo.

  Shit, boy -- you sorry and beyond all hope.

  Cider chuckled to himself and looked around the cafe. Behind the counter, just above the zinc-topped portal where the short-order cook slapped up plates of eggs, chorizo and tortillas, hung the heads of four, well-racked bucks.