The Bird Boys

by Lisa Sandlin

  Far off a siren whined, almost unbearably shrieked by on Orleans Street, shrank into the distance.

  She mouthed Yeah, found her voice. “Yeah.”

  He still didn’t look up. “Could you say it?”

  “Yeah, I guess I could…trust you to do this,” Delpha whispered.

  Phelan raised his head, looked into her eyes, and there it was again, more than she could take in: some kind of driving mainline, bursts, pain, illuminations. Then he blinked, picked up the felt-tip and uncapped it. He steadied her chin with a knuckle, eyeballed, dotted.

  “OK,” he said hoarsely. Cleared his throat. “Check it out. Even?”

  Delpha lifted the compact, studied one ear, turned her head, studied the other, touching its lobe, nodded.

  He recapped the pen, dropped it on the floor. Took a big breath and settled into his body. “Now. Once upon a time there was two people, a man and a woman, and they were snared in a briar patch…”

  “Oh, huh uh.”

  “What.”

  “Distractin’ me so I won’t notice when you stick the needle. I’mon notice, Tom.”

  “Aw, no. Not that wily. Come a little bit forward. Tuck your hair back. There. Be still, Delpha. And listen here…” His jaw was almost touching hers.

  And she was listening, she was. To Phelan say her given name. He smelled like cigarettes and cinnamon powder.

  “…I mean, in this briar patch, there was green briars and scarlet briars, privet hedges and holly, there was stinging nettles. Ever get stung by those? Boy, that sting lasts a long time, I guarantee.”

  He plucked the needle off the paper towel in her lap. Scooped up the purple lighter, flicked it, and passed the needle through the flame. “Anyway, there were these two people, in the middle of thorns and thistles. Go one way, scratch, go the other, sting. Couldn’t see any way out.” His hands doing something she couldn’t see with the isopropyl. Then a couple fingertips tilting her jaw a little. She felt more alcohol wet, sharp-smelling, cold on the back of one ear. Prickles raised on her arms.

  Knuckles gentle against her neck. Quick pinch, tickle of blood, then a gauze-covered finger and thumb clamping the spot, numbing out the sting.

  Alcohol on the pinch. Moving hands.

  “One day, a bear came into the thicket, bit the man’s finger, and tried to run off. The man grabbed its neck and ripped a strip of fur off its back.” Fingertips warm on her other ear, another stick. Tamping of dry gauze this time, the chill of alcohol, cold metal against her skin.

  “His finger was gone, but the man laid down the fur and walked over it, got out of the briar patch.”

  “Where was the woman?”

  “She stayed in the thorns.”

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “Powerful bunch of thorns.”

  Metal chill against the other ear…back, front, cinched. Swabbing more alcohol.

  “Then one day a kudzu vine showed up. It snaked and looped over the briars, covered them layer on layer ‘til not a nettle saw daylight. Kudzu grew up under her feet like a green quilt, and the woman walked out.” More gauze tossed.

  “Thank you. Then what?”

  “Then what? More briar patches, more bears, more kudzu. You didn’t think this was a fairy tale?”

  Her lips curved. “Ain’t there any surprises?”

  He’d moved back only a little, face still near hers. “Yeah, Delpha. I think there will be surprises.”

  He held up the compact. She took it. Angling her head, Delpha maneuvered the compact mirror, beheld the silver ball in her smarting right ear, the silver ball in her left. Blood cleaned off. Neat. Even. Stainless steel.

  Her blue-gray eyes flicked up to meet his brown ones. Him and her were knee to knee. A shot of heat scalded upward through her, then a shot of scared: tiny drops that scattered out.

  The telephone rang. Over on her desk.

  She pressed her lips together, tipped her head as she threw a glance toward the phone. Tom rolled his chair back to give her room. Delpha got up and answered it, holding the receiver almost horizontally, to keep it off her earring.

  “Phelan Investigations. How may we help you?”

  Tom bent over and scooped up the used gauze strips, the pen, and the lighter that lay on the floor. Slipped the lighter in his pocket, balled up the gauze and rolled it between his palms. Drilled it into the wastebasket by the side of her desk. Before disappearing into his office, he brought over the white Rao’s sack and set it by her elbow.

  The End

  NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A FEW OF the 1973 dates of actual events have been slightly adjusted to fit the chronology of “The Bird Boys.” Other irregularities readers may find are inadvertent and are all my fault.

  I’m enormously grateful to the good people who read drafts or chapters of the book and gave invaluable comments: David Baker, Eddie Elfers, Lynda Madison, Shelly Clark Geisler, Susanne Kehm, Greg Kosmicki, Laura Hays, Celia Ludi, Ruth Berger, Sheryl Cotleur, and Thomas Wörtche. I appreciate very much that Gerald Richardson; Steve Wiggins, Beaumont D.A., ret.; and Beaumont Police Chief Jimmy Singletary took time to speak with me about local background. Former Nebraska police officer and current Humane Society enforcer Mark Langan, author of “Busting Bad Guys,” shared his expertise on interrogation. Lifeguard and swim teacher/writer Katie Gallardo and her employer Ben Slovek kindly offered specific information on lifesaving, which I’ve stashed for the future. For encouragement and hospitality, I thank Sterling Municipal Library in Baytown, TX, (especially Jenna Harte), and its loyal and charming association, Friends of the Library. I am proud and happy to be able to use the cover photo, “Nevermore,” by renowned photographer Keith Carter. Finally, I owe a big debt to editor Lee Byrd and to Bobby and John Byrd of Cinco Puntos, the hardest-working press this side of the river.

  LISA SANDLIN WAS born in Beaumont, Texas, where she grew up in oil-refinery air, sixty miles from the Gulf of Mexico. After raising a son in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she taught writing for over twenty years at Wayne State College and at the University of Nebraska Omaha. She has since returned to Santa Fe.

  The Bird Boys, a sequel to The Do-Right, which won the Shamus Award and the Hammett Prize, is her sixth book. She likes writing about brand-new detective Tom Phelan and his ex-con secretary Delpha Wade, who’s fighting for a place in the free world. They’ve set up business in downtown Beaumont, Texas, where the architecture runs to Art Deco and Gothic Revival, and the population to homegrown evil. It’s 1973, “Killing Me Softly” is playing on the radio, and they just might make a living.