by Jim Nesbitt
“It gets worse.”
“I hate when friends tell me that. Look — let me order another round here. If I’m going to listen to misery, I need more whiskey.”
Krukovitch shot his cuffs through the sleeves of a padded, mock-mohair jacket from the Gap, smoothed his thin, slick-against-the-skull blond hair and signaled Whitey for two more Maker’s.
He was a short, balding man with rounded, wire-frame glasses, the intense glare of Leon Trotsky and the steely straight posture of a weightlifter and little guy always trying to be taller and bigger than God made him to be. He chain smoked Carltons from the flip-top box and poured cup after cup of thick, black coffee down his gullet — from wakeup till late evening, which usually found him at Louie’s, arguing politics, writing and literature with the other would-be poets and novelists who roosted in the rear of the bar.
Except that Krukovitch, a cranky and brilliant conservative whose forefathers hailed from the steppes of the Ukraine and whose father ran a Texaco heating oil business in Fargo, was a successful novelist, newspaper columnist and syndicated essayist. He wrote yuppie thrillers. His stock character was a food columnist who always stumbled into bizarre murder mysteries with a culinary element, like the Shining Path disciple who decided to spike all the hot dogs sold at the Super Bowl with a powerful hallucinogen so he could kill the president. That one was called Hold the Mustard. His collection of columns and essays, many of them reruns from the local alternative weekly, the Dallas Observer, was called Jangled Mutterings, Confused Complaints.
“What could be worse, my son, than being in love with a woman who is making such a total fool out of you that everyone in your favorite bar knows about it? Are we talking a social disease here? Are we talking about one of the other guys coming after you with a lead pipe? Did you take her to Vegas and tie the knot?”
“Cut the crap.”
Burch downed his shot, blew out his breath and lit a Lucky. He looked at Krukovitch and hesitated.
“What? What could be so bad? Tell me.”
Burch told it fast.
“She said she wanted to buy a house. I loaned her five K for the down. There wasn’t a house. There was a drug deal. It was a sting. She told the boys downtown she was fronting for me.”
“And with friends like the ones you’ve got on the force, they were only too willing to believe, right?”
“That an ex-cop and former murder suspect might also be a drug dealer? Pavlovian salivation would be the phrase. I got the full-court press — the midnight arrest, complete with knocked-down door, cuffs and a night in Lew Sterrett. Plus four grand for the bond and eight grand for the lawyer. Not to mention the five I loaned her.”
“No, I don’t guess she would be giving you a refund, would she?”
“Seized as evidence. And I can’t touch it because I had to deny that I gave her the money. I had to make it her word against mine, which was easy to do because I gave her cash and didn’t give her a check.”
“But they could still pull your bank records, right?”
“Yeah, they did that. They found a six K withdrawal that matches the time of the deal. It gave ’em a hard-on until my lawyer told them it was money for past legal work and provided them the dummy records that proved it.”
“Good legal work.”
“Yeah. Well worth the extra three K I had to pay for this service.”
“On top of the eight for representing you in court?”
“And the four for the bond and the five K I dropped on Irish.”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch is right. I had to take out another loan. And business is going in the tank right now.”
“But hell, this shithole is finally bouncing back from the bust. Business should be good.”
“Not for a pee-eye who specialized in tracking down deadbeats for banks and S&Ls. I did right well off the bust. A counter-cyclical business, mine is.”
Burch signaled Whitey. Krukovitch shot his cuffs, lit another Carlton and held up his coffee cup. Bourbon and caffeine — the poor man’s speedball.
“Love has a price tag. Where is the lovely lass now?”
“Not in hell, unfortunately. Long gone. She dropped dime on me and her suppliers and split town home free.”
“No charges?”
“Dropped. Smooth talk and good looks will take you a long way in this life.”
“That they will, lad.”
“Any advice?”
“I’ll tell you what an old friend used to tell me when I’d pour my heart out about some lying, faithless, feckless bitch and start crying on his shoulder about my pitiful existence. He would push my face up out of my beer, cock his head and say `Krukovitch — I wish you well.’”
Krukovitch chuckled, pleased with his story and its perfect fit with their conversation. Burch stared at Krukovitch and didn’t laugh. The smaller man looked uncomfortable. One man’s perfect fit is another man’s insult.
“That line is always delivered with a flat nasal accent and an ironic tone. Consider it a roughhouse term of endearment.”
A joke explained is a joke that missed. Krukovitch tried to smile but it froze into a grimace. Burch broke his stare and let him off the hook.
“A comfort.”
Krukovitch raised his glass in salute. Burch did the same.
“I wish you well.”
“It just doesn’t matter.”
“No — I guess it doesn’t.”
FOUR
“Look — can the cute lines, Big Boy. Here’s the deal — either he staged his own murder or got fried to a crackly crisp when his car blew up in a field out by the Intercontinental.”
“What do the cops think?”
“You think they let me in on their pow-wows? Like you said — I’m a suspect. They did show me some personal effects. Most were badly burned but I recognized a Rolex I gave him last year — my name was on the back.”
“Rolex — you ain’t playin’ with Zippos anymore.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Did you say Zippo? Oh, yeah — that damned lighter you gave me. I lost it.”
“Hey, it was extra weight. You were climbing the ladder.”
“I was doing what I had to do.”
“And doing whoever you met along the way.”
“That was five years ago. Man, you bear a grudge.”
“You bet — I’m Scots-Irish. We’re worse than Sicilians — we don’t forget, we don’t forgive and we like to serve up our revenge hot and frothy. Fuck that plate of cold stuff.”
“Great speech.”
“I’ll get off the soapbox then. Assuming I’d want to take a fucking job from you, why hire me? Hire the best defense attorney in Houston; he’ll come complete with a good brace of investigators. Hell — hire Racehorse Haynes. If he can get Cullen Davis off, he can save your piss-ant ass. Percy Forman’s dead but the DeGuerin brothers are still around — if you can figure out which one spells his name which way.”
“Cut it, Eddie. I’m not trying to hire you to prove I’m innocent. I want to hire you to either find that worthless puke of a husband of mine or find the guys who offed him. They, or he — or all of them — took some assets that belonged to some people who are holding me accountable.”
He yawned into the mouthpiece.
“An interesting story Irish but you can’t afford to hire me — your account is already heavily in arrears.”
“Are you still pissed about that little business deal?”
“Pissed is what I was while it went down. Pissed is what I felt while those cops were sizing me up for those fashionable gray work clothes they give all the residents down at Huntsville. Pissed is what I felt when I had to peel off about twenty K to get myself out of your mess. Pissed is what I was as I watched my bank account drain like a kitchen sink.”
“What are you now?”
“Not interested.”
Burch hung up. He lit another Lucky. Two drags later, the phone rang again. The o
perator. He refused to accept the collect call and hung up. Two more drags and a stab of a finger to turn off the answering machine. A ringing phone. He ignored it. The rings stopped at ten, leaving a sudden silence that sent another disturbing wave of memory and doubt through his mind.
No way, son. Bad news. Let it roll on by. Wonder what she really wants? What type of sucker suit has she got me sized up for this time? Jee-zus — you never do learn, do you? Not since grade school. What are you gunning for — a PhD in trouble and pain? Nah, I just audit these classes. Christ, you’re a stupid sumbitch. True enough — wonder if I can beat her at her own game?
Slowly, unevenly, like a mover trying to wrestle a chest of drawers up a narrow staircase, sleep muscled his consciousness aside. It took a long time. His eyes were shut but his ears stayed alert for that ringing phone. He knew she would call again. He knew she would keep at him. He was thinking that as he finally drifted off, mouth agape, snoring, a thin line of drool running into his beard.
His eyes snapped open four hours later, his heart lurching in his chest, his mind frozen by a loud, burring sound. The phone was finally ringing. It was on the nightstand above his head, a crafty move for a common household appliance that was on the floor when he went to sleep — too crafty for his addled mind. He fumbled for his glasses and squinted at the digital alarm clock. 7:54. In the ay-yem. Early riser. Had to be her. After those nights when she did stay over, she used to leave his bed then call from her office to make sure he made an early morning meeting with a client. Had to be her.
“This is Ed Earl Burch — I’ll accept the charges, operator.”
“What? This isn’t the operator.”
That made no sense. There was a woman’s voice on the line. Had to be her.
“You finally get a phone card, Savannah?”
“Mr. Burch, my name is not Savannah. I’m calling for Wilbert Nofzinger, attorney at law. You’re familiar with his name, are you not?”
Burch groaned. Fat Willie, his shyster. Broker of the twenty K note that kept him from tending a clock ticking a load of hard time. Forger of phony legal bills that kept the cops off his back — for a price. Holder of another eleven K note on his business, his pickup and his bass boat. Owner of his financial hide and what little hair that hadn’t been scraped from it.
“Been sittin’ here thinkin’ about my fav-o-rite client. Yessir — you bet. Jus’ sittin’ here, stirrin’ a little bourbon into my morning coffee and runnin’ a little mental image of you. Wanna know what you were doin’?”
“Not if it has anything to do with animal husbandry.”
A laugh that sounded like a gymnasium toilet flushing in a tile-lined room.
“Animal husbandry — that’s good. Stump fuckin’, right? Slippin’ the salami into ol’ Bessie, right? You got a dirty mind, Burch. Thas’ what I like ’bout you, boy.”
A gurgling sip of coffee and bourbon — the sound a dog makes sucking down his first chunk of Alpo.
“Naw, naw. You weren’t stump fuckin’ anything in this picture. Naw, see — what you were doin’ was walking right into my office with a nice, fat envelope in your hand. You had on that fine leather blazer — the black one, the one that covers the Colt up real nice. And you were wearin’ a smile. You walked right up to me and said, `Willie, I believe I’ve fell behind in my obligations to you. Here’s what I owe and a little somethin’ extra for your trouble.’”
“That’s the trouble with dreams — they never come true.”
“Hey! Listen up, fuckhead. You’re five months down and your big note just got called. That’s eighteen large — one and an eight with a K waggin’ behind it. Not to mention what I’m carryin’. Am I gettin’ through to you?”
Burch hung up.
The phone rang before he could pull his hand back.
“Try this for a mental image, jackass — you’re in prison for shylockin’ and accepting stolen property. A big buck named Cleotus is trying to cut a new path between your asshole and your tonsils. Am I gettin’ through to you?”
Silence on the line, then a cough.
“Ahhhh — this is the operator. I have a collect call from a Savannah Crowe. Will you accept the charges?”
“Ah, Christ. Yes.”
“Interesting way of greeting an operator, handsome.”
“Kiss my ass, Savannah.”
“Another interesting image. You’re really rolling and it’s barely eight, darling. In the old days, I had to call you twice and suggest something really nasty to get you up and out before ten.”
“That’s if you weren’t too busy sucking off Gene or Bill or whoever the hell else you were banging after you left my bed.”
“A nasty temper this morning. Have you started mixing Seconal and red wine again, darling? It makes you meaner than a boar hog.”
“No — my shitty attitude comes from old memories of you, lover.”
“Hmmmmm. Maybe I can sweeten you up a little bit.”
“Damn unlikely. No — let me amend that. You can make my shitty attitude rise up to the level of white folks and high-dollar whores.”
“Fuck you, Eddie.”
“No — fuck yourself, lover. Or find one of those other guys you used to fuck when you were fucking me. Go yank on his chain. Go bring back somebody else’s bad memories of having a big turd dropped on his head and ruin his damn morning. Get the fuck out of mine.”
“Wait! Don’t hang up.”
“Do you hear a click on the line? DO YOU?”
“No.”
“So why don’t you just tell me what the fuck it is you want from me?”
A snarling delivery that ended in a growl. A soft voice on the other side of the line.
“I told you. I want you to find that sorry puke husband of mine. Or the guys who fried him.”
“Forty K.”
“What?”
“Forty K. Forty grand. Forty large. Twenty of it up front, sent to my lawyer. And I get expenses.”
“Forty K. You want a lot.”
“I got financial obligations. You got bad trouble that nobody else would handle.”
A sigh on the line.
“Forty K?”
“That’s right.”
“Done.”
“Done?”
“Done.”
“What kind of trouble has your money bought me?”
No answer. No need for one.
FIVE
Jason Willard Crowe was a 42-year-old Houston comer in monogrammed shirts and Hickey-Freeman suits, a smiling-eyed, white-collared hustler with coal-black hair you couldn’t comb with a rake. That was before he got cooked in his own $34,000 sled of leather-trimmed German steel.
Maybe he just ripped off the wrong client and got turned into a crispy critter, an unlucky player of the gray margins of the tax codes who ran into a true badass mad about a big loss. Or maybe he worked the shadier zones beyond the lights of legal commerce, a frequenter of art gallery openings with a regular table at Brennan’s and a secret business life who had his own death staged to get away from angry playmates, partners or associates. And a wife who had as lethal a lust for money and action as any hood, hooker or financier.
Or maybe he just disappeared himself so he could escape the dogs of banking, securities and law enforcement that were loosed on his slick little world of smooth paper and thirty-to-one guaranteed partnership losses, regulatory revenge for the carnage of the oil bust and the real estate collapse that started rolling across Texas like a tsunami in the mid-80s, drowning the big and small. It was a relentlessly grim comeuppance for all that Lone Star hubris when oil was $30 a barrel and greedy dreamers lusted for $60, a rude stopper to all that bragging about being the nation’s Third Coast.
That seemed like an eternity ago and Texas was on the rebound, tracking the national economic upswing ushered in by a bubba from Arkansas in the White House with his famously wandering eye and battle-axe wife, the Lady Macbeth of American politics.
Ol’ Jace left a bag of questi
ons — why get cooked for a little tax and securities fraud or a limited partnership soured by tax code shifts, why stage a disappearing act just to get out from under a crowd of fleeced and angry doctors, lawyers and accountants? Bankruptcy was as much a part of Texas as the Alamo, the safety it offered the busted bidnessman almost as sacred as the mission ground. Stealing was another fine bit of Texas legend and lore — from cattle rustled from the Mexicans by John Chisholm or Charles Goodnight and land stolen from Indians, ranchers and farmers by anybody rich, powerful or ballsy enough to get away with it, to the dead folks who rose up and voted LBJ to his first congressional term.
All the boy had to do was stash his loot in some offshore accounts, take a hit of jail time and come out on the other side with a nest egg for life. Or get a fast lawyer to get him off the hook. Might get a little uncomfortable being around the crowd at Brennan’s or Cafe Annie’s, but he’d be breathing free, gulping lungsful of that fetid Houston air. Getting caught was one of the reasons God stuck the world with lawyers and crooked judges. Might as well take advantage of the Good Lord’s graces.
Unless he wasn’t fast enough to build a pile before the bust and the tax code shift of `86 sucked him under. Unless he was playing a different game on the side and his playmates got pissed. Unless it was those guys he needed to escape forever, not the lawdogs. Unless he needed to slip away from Savannah before she slipped something sharp and lethal into him.
Burch took a drag from a soggy-ended Lucky and a sip of Maker’s. He was sitting at the short end of the bar at Louie’s, grabbing background on Crowe from a folder full of Lexus-Nexus printouts Krukovitch cadged off the Observer’s account and smaller nuggets stored on the columnist’s PowerBook. He leafed through a long profile written shortly after Crowe disappeared. Son of an oilfield roughneck. High school studhoss, quarterback and object of desire for every school in the Southwestern Conference. Picked A&M. Aggieville. Blew out a knee — Burch’s zippered hinges ached in sympathy.
Sidelined from the gridiron, Crowe showed as much feel for a spreadsheet and finances as he did for the soft spots in a safety-up zone. Transferred to Rice, which still wanted him for the gridiron. Did a double major — accounting and pre-law. Went to Austin and the big university for his law shingle. Went to work for LQ, Lon Quantrell, the man who turned Glenn McCarthy’s wildcatting empire into an energy conglomerate. Quantrell was a big Rice booster and probably the stake horse for Crowe’s academic career. Married the boss’s daughter, a classmate at Rice. Got cut in as a partner on lucrative oil and gas deals. Pictures of Crowe and wifey at all the right social galas and gallery openings.