The Next Time You Die

by Harry Hunsicker

  I rolled down the window, shifted the transmission into park, and placed my hands on the top of the steering wheel. Billy wiped the sweat off his brow and folded his hands in his lap.

  The officer stopped at the rear window, where Tess sat displaying some skin and trying not to be a piece of meat. He was about thirty, with a fair complexion and freckles that would someday turn into precancerous lesions. He wore the standard uniform, olive khaki pants and shirt, and a gray felt Stetson hat.

  “How are you doing today?” His voice was friendly even though he kept his right hand on the butt of his service pistol.

  “Doing fine, Officer.” I kept my fingers glued to the steering wheel.

  “Sir, I clocked you going seventy-eight in a sixty-five zone.”

  I nodded.

  “Could I see your license and insurance?”

  “Sure thing.” I held up my right hand. “I’m gonna reach into my back pocket and get my wallet, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.” The highway patrolman nodded. “Please go ahead.”

  I eased my hand to my hip pocket and realized we had a small problem. This wasn’t my car. I didn’t know where the insurance papers were. If I started opening compartments and consoles, there was no telling what would pop out. Like Delmar’s .44 Magnum, or the ball of plastic explosive; maybe the odd hand grenade or two.

  I pulled out my Texas driver’s license and the handgun carry permit, which was required by law to be shown to an officer if he or she requested identification. “Here’s my stuff. I am permitted for concealed carry, too.”

  “Are you carrying a weapon on you at the moment, sir?” He took the two ID cards.

  “Yes.” I put my hands back on the steering wheel. “I have a pistol underneath my shirt on my right side.”

  The cop looked at my licenses for a moment and then stared at me. I felt a trickle of sweat dribble down the small of my back. He leaned against the top of the car and peered inside. “And who are you?”

  “Hey, how ya doing there, Officer.” Billy smiled the smile that had let him skate through a lifetime of trouble. “My name is Billy Reynolds.”

  “Are you a private investigator, too?”

  “No, sir.” Billy laughed. “I am in the food supply business. You got a restaurant, I got your menu items, lemme tell you what. You name it: lobster tails, prime filets, salmon, whatever you need.” He reached over and handed the man an embossed business card.

  The cop looked in the backseat. “And who are you?”

  Tess said her name. Then, “These are my boyfriends. Can’t decide which one I’m gonna marry, though. If you were me, which one would you pick?”

  “Huh?” The highway patrolman blinked.

  “Guess I should go with the biggest dick. Don’t you think?”

  “Uhh . . . I . . . uuhh.” The officer looked at me and then back at Tess.

  “I just want someone to treat me right,” she said, fanning herself with one hand, her accent sounding like a southern belle. “Is that so much to ask?” In my peripheral vision I saw Billy’s smile stretch tight and a fresh film of perspiration coat his face.

  The cop looked at me again, his eyes confused. He shook his head a couple of times. “Oh, yeah. I need the insurance card.”

  “The insurance?”

  “Yep.” He nodded. “Proof of liability coverage.”

  I tried to sound sincere and nonthreatening. “I’m borrowing this car. And I’m not real sure where my friend keeps his card.”

  The cop frowned. He cut his eyes to Tess for one more quick look. He didn’t appear confused anymore. He looked professional—and suspicious. He said, “I’m gonna go to my car now. I’ll be back.” He walked away.

  When the officer opened the door of the squad car, Billy turned toward the back and slipped his arm between the two front seats. He grabbed Tess’s hand and twisted.

  “Shit, Billy, that hurts.”

  “You stupid fucking slut.” His voice was low but charged with anger. “It’s like you want us to get caught.”

  “Billy.” Tess’s voice was ragged, tears visible in her eyes. “Please. That h-h-hurts.”

  “Let her go, Billy.” I could see the cop talking on his radio and staring at the back of our car. I didn’t dare turn around to help her.

  “Lessons need to be learned, Hank.” He moved his arm another few inches, and Tess screamed.

  “That cop hears her yelling and we’re all going for a ride.” I was sweating now in spite of the air-conditioning.

  Billy gave her one last squeeze and snaked his arm back into the front seat. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the highway patrolman walking our way. I wiped sweat off my face. Billy reached under his seat and pulled out the Ruger. He put the weapon in his lap and covered it with a section of newspaper that had been lying on the floorboard.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I said.

  “Just being careful.”

  I started to reply but the cop was at the window.

  He said, “This car is registered to the Elm Street Benevolent Society.”

  “It’s my friend’s. His name is Delmar.”

  “Delmar?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s clean . . . not reported stolen or anything.”

  “Like I said, I’m just borrowing it.”

  “Is everything all right?” The cop squinted at me. “You look like you’re gonna get sick.”

  Billy rustled the newspaper slightly.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Haven’t had a ticket in a while.”

  “Ma’am?” He looked in the back. “Are you okay?”

  “I-I-I’m fine, too.” Tess’s voice was hoarse with emotion.

  “We’re all fine,” Billy said. “Hey, you know what, why don’t I send you some steaks? I got a case of New York strips you can cut with a spoon.”

  “No, thanks.” The officer handed me a clipboard. “I’m citing you for failure to provide insurance and speeding. Sign on the line at the bottom, please.”

  I did as instructed and handed the papers back to him. He looked in the back one more time and then told us to have a good day before walking back to the squad car.

  Billy let out his breath and slumped forward. I put the car in gear and pulled onto the highway.

  Billy eased his seat back and closed his eyes. “Tess, you ever pull that shit again, I will fuck you up sixty different ways to Sunday.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  During the rest of the trip home I drove the speed limit and tried not to think about the second time Billy Barringer had saved my life, only to have me repay the favor by turning him over to the police.

  The frame-up fell on a mentally handicapped guy named Teddy from Nacogdoches, a small town deep in the pines of Southeast Texas.

  The story at the time was that the Barringers had paid Teddy’s mother ten grand, with the promise of ten more if her son got the death penalty. Mama, a third-generation welfare recipient and no Mensa candidate herself, didn’t really care one way or the other about any of her five kids, especially when that kind of loot was being waved around. Money was tight and selling the family retard made as much sense as turning out one of the thirteen-year-olds to hustle the long-haul drivers at the truck stop behind the family double-wide.

  So an emissary of the Barringers paid the cash and drove Teddy to the resort town of Port Aransas, a skinny barrier island at the mouth of the Corpus Christi Bay. Once there, he met Billy Barringer in the parking lot of the Dunes Liquor Store and transferred Teddy to his new guardian.

  This was midmorning of June fifth of the prior year, a little over twenty-four hours before a crooked police officer from Beaumont, Texas, sat down to lunch with his family and had his brains splattered all over the onion rings and his twin daughters’ new swim cover-ups, which, unfortunately, the nine-year-old girls were wearing at the time.

  After Billy picked up Teddy from the parking lot of the liquor store, he took him to eat at Pizza Hut and then
to the beach to watch the college girls loll around on the sand, all oily and tan.

  Billy sat on a dune underneath an umbrella with Teddy and explained what he needed to do the following day. It was really very simple. Just sit here on the beach and look at girls. Billy showed him the shirt he was going to wear. Teddy nodded occasionally and scratched his beard, grunting an affirmative when it seemed necessary.

  After sitting by the ocean for a while, they went to a rented house two blocks from the beach, where Billy ran over it again and made sure that his young friend understood completely what was expected of him. To seal the deal, Billy brought in a Mexican prostitute to service Teddy, guaranteeing lots more lovin’ if he did as promised the next day.

  I didn’t know any of this when I drove my rental car into the sandy parking lot of the Beachcomber Bar and Grill late in the morning of June sixth.

  Like so many things in life that were complicated, that day started out deceptively simple. A very wealthy man from Amarillo wanted me to give a package of money to a cop from Beaumont so that a piece of fake evidence would disappear.

  I didn’t know that the bearded man in the Metallica T-shirt sitting by the jukebox was a freelance shooter out of Laredo who worked for cheap due to his unreliability and substance abuse issues.

  I didn’t know he had just ingested two grams of cocaine to get amped up for the hit, in direct violation of the instructions given to him by my childhood friend Billy Barringer.

  I didn’t know he was hearing voices in his head that told him to go ahead and pop the mark a full twenty minutes before schedule.

  Instead, I sat at the bar a few feet from the cop and his family and watched a freighter slice through the glassy waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The windows were open and a warm breeze blew through the place, mixing with the pleasant smell of hamburgers cooking on a grill and beer being poured from the taps.

  I sipped from a glass of iced tea and waited for the cop from Beaumont to finish eating lunch with his family. The brown paper bag stuffed with one-hundred-dollar bills was wedged between my legs.

  A dark-haired girl in a bikini so small it was probably illegal in certain states wandered in from the beach-side door and ordered a Corona. She rolled the icy bottle across her brow and then took a long drink, spilling a thin stream out of the corner of her mouth.

  I was watching the beer trickle over her chin and down her tanned chest and failed to see the man in the Metallica shirt stand up.

  I turned away from the girl when she caught me staring. Saw Metallica Man three feet behind the cop from Beaumont, his eyes jiggling as if they were plugged into an electric socket.

  A small-caliber revolver appeared in his hand. The muzzle blossomed with flame, and a flawed man died in front of his family for reasons I never quite understood, the moment forever seared into the crevices of their souls as forces far outside the bell curve of human decency ripped their lives to shreds.

  The girl in the bikini shouted and dropped her beer.

  The wife of the cop brushed a piece of her husband’s skull from her hair and began to twitch uncontrollably, as if her nerves had been short-circuited. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.

  I jumped up and grabbed for the weapon on my hip. It wasn’t there; I’d flown into the Corpus Christi airport only an hour before and had no opportunity to find a local piece.

  Metallica Man stood stiff-legged by the booth, the gun still pointing at the dead police officer. He yelled something unintelligible as Billy Barringer rushed into the room.

  Billy looked at him for a half second and then at the cop, slumped facedown in his half-eaten cheeseburger.

  Metallica Man scratched his beard and said, “Oh, shit.”

  Billy said, “Have you fucking lost your mind?”

  Metallica Man’s cheeks puffed up, as if he were blowing on a trombone. He fired again, the bullet striking the dead cop in the back. He turned and pointed the gun at me. He cocked the hammer. I became very still, weighing my options: an open room, no cover, the threat only a few feet away. I willed myself to be as small a target as possible.

  The girl in the bikini and the wife of the victim screamed. Billy lunged and tackled the shooter. The murder weapon skittered across the hardwood floor. I scooped it up.

  Billy seemed to see me for the first time. He didn’t waste time on the niceties. “Bring the gun.” He shoved the killer through a side door and down a narrow set of stairs.

  I followed instinctively, murder weapon in one hand, bag of money in the other.

  The restaurant sat perched on a grass-covered dune. Forty yards from the stairs Billy stopped underneath a pair of palm trees. A line of saw palmettos blocked our view of the beach.

  “What the hell was that about?” He threw the shooter against the trunk of one of the trees.

  I dropped to my knees and sucked in a deep breath of salty air. The gun in my hand was a blued Smith & Wesson, already damp from the humidity. I tossed it on the ground.

  Billy picked it up and slapped the shooter across the face with the barrel. “You fucking idiot.”

  “We need to take him back. There’s a dead cop in there.” I pointed toward the beachfront restaurant.

  Billy looked at me for a long few moments, a half smile on his face. “How long’s it been, three, four years now?”

  “He blew the guy’s brains out in front of his little girls.” I nodded at the shooter, who was holding one hand against his nose, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.” Billy backhanded the shooter with the revolver again. “Shit. We just wanted a different MO, not traceable to the family.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “How’s life been treating you, Hank?” Billy hit the killer again, across the mouth this time. A couple of teeth landed in the sand. “You doing okay as a PI?”

  “Leave something for the police to throw in jail, will ya.” I took a step forward, trying to stop my friend from pistol-whipping the man in the Metallica shirt to death. The reality of what had just occurred was slowly dawning on me.

  “God, you are so not getting it, Hank.” Billy pressed the muzzle of the Smith & Wesson against the temple of the shooter and pulled the trigger. The discharge sounded like a pop gun, the sand and sky soaking up the noise like an immense silencer. The shooter fell over on one side.

  “Billy.” I jumped to my feet.

  My friend stuck the revolver underneath his shirt and trotted toward the beach. I stared at the corpse and then ran after him.

  I caught up with him at a spot a few feet from the surf, underneath a faded yellow umbrella. He was standing next to a bearded man in a Metallica T-shirt. The guy was much younger than the now-dead shooter from the restaurant, but his coloring and build were similar. He showed no concern for the blued Smith & Wesson resting in his lap, his concentration fixed on a pair of young women sitting a few yards away.

  “You gonna be cool, Hank?” Billy pulled a Mr. Pibb from a small ice chest resting on the sand. “I saved your life back there, you know.”

  “The Barringers took out the cop.” I spoke the words more to myself than to Billy.

  “We needed a public display.” He pulled open the tab on the soft drink. “Didn’t quite happen the way it was supposed to, but it’ll still work out.”

  I looked at the sack full of money in my hand.

  “Won’t it, Hank?” Billy Barringer smiled the smile perfected after years of avoiding the consequences of his actions.

  “You usually take someone out with a twenty-two, don’t you?” I looked away from the surf and saw a Port Aransas PD squad car squeal to a stop in front of the Beachcomber Bar and Grill. “One bullet in the belly button.”

  Billy shrugged, the grin never leaving his face. Two more police cars arrived at the restaurant, lights flashing. One of the cars pulled away and headed down the beach.

  “What about the other one?” I jerked my head toward the dune where th
e body of the shooter lay.

  “In a couple of hours somebody will get him,” Billy said. “The police are gonna be busy with the crime scene and then with my friend here.” He pointed the can of Mr. Pibb at the younger man holding the Smith & Wesson.

  “A Ruger semiautomatic twenty-two.” I nodded slowly. “That’s the gun used, according to the papers.”

  The squad car was getting closer.

  “You used to gunsmith those Rugers yourself, back in high school. Always did like them to have a hair trigger.”

  “What of it?”

  “Nothing. Just recollecting.” I heard a helicopter overhead. An ambulance stopped at the restaurant.

  “One thing, though.” I crossed my arms and frowned. “A revolver, like that Smith, has a gap between the chamber and the barrel. When you fire, some of the blast escapes from between that gap.”

  Billy frowned as the squad car stopped a few feet away.

  “Leaves a residue they can test for.”

  “You ain’t gonna turn me in, are you, Hank?” Billy’s face went pale. “That guy was bad like you wouldn’t believe.”

  The first Port Aransas police officer approached, gun drawn. He was plainly focused on the man in the Metallica shirt.

  “How come, Billy?” I shook my head slowly.

  “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”

  I wanted to say something more but couldn’t, the beach now filled with police pointing weapons at the man sitting on the sand with the Smith & Wesson in his lap.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  We passed the Dallas city limit sign about the time rush hour hit. Most of the traffic was going the opposite way, out of the town center, heading to the sprawling suburbs ringing the city. The skyline loomed ahead, a jagged protrusion from the black prairie.

  “Let’s go to your house,” Billy said.

  “It’s in a crappy neighborhood,” Tess said.

  “Good.” Billy smiled. “You think Rundell knows where it is?”

  “Doubt it.” I jammed on the brakes as a sea of red lights materialized in front of me. We were on Woodall Rogers Freeway, on the north side of downtown. I was heading in that general direction while trying to come up with a better plan, like maybe dropping both of them off at the Nut Hut.