Still River

by Harry Hunsicker

  Boss Hogg moved to pick up the money but Fagen put down two more bills and said, “Double or nothing?”

  “You’re on.” The chubby man pulled out his money.

  The recently deceased bird must have radioed back to his compatriots about the danger that lay ahead because the next bird screamed out of the box like it had a Roman candle up its ass. It flew straight at the Orlando shooter and surprised him, throwing his aim off. He hit the bird but not enough to kill it. There was a short, quick spray of feathers and the target flew out of the ring, counting as a loss. It wobbled, wings not functioning properly, and flew straight into the window in front of where we sat. The pigeon hit the glass with a thud and slid down, leaving a smear of blood.

  Strathmore pocketed the money then held the gun up for us to see, balancing the butt on his thigh. “So you like shotguns, huh?”

  “I like things that go bang.” Nolan smiled and smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle down the side of her blouse, drawing everyone’s attention to her chest.

  Strathmore was silent for a few moments, then: “Uh … yeah. This is a pretty one, just bought it, as a matter of fact.” He rubbed his hand on the forearm, the grain of the wood swirling into a creamy chocolate pattern that had been polished to a high gloss. “I particularly like the engraving on the receiver.” He put the gun on the table so we could get a better view.

  The metal on the side of the firearm was burnished to a high luster and inlayed with gold. A rendition of a reclining nude woman stretched along the length of the receiver. The image was a frontal shot, with her head tossed back, hiding her face. The likeness was very detailed. Very.

  “That’s as pretty as a picture, ain’t it?” Boss Hogg decided to get in on the fun. “I don’t believe I’ve had the privilege.” He pulled off his Stetson and held out a handful of stubby, sweating fingers. “Name’s James Ethridge Snodgrass. Mah friends call me Jimmy.”

  Nolan introduced herself and shook hands. I did the same.

  Jimmy turned to the Big Man sitting next to him. “And this is my friend and bidness associate, Mr. Fagen Strathmore.”

  Strathmore greeted us each by name and shook hands. His fingers were as long and thin as Jimmy’s had been short and fat. He gripped my hand and bobbed it twice, cool and firm. He lingered over Nolan’s touch, smiling at her and making eye contact. His eyes were trouble—deep, blue, and penetrating; they sucked at the marrow of your being, drew you in like a tractor beam.

  “Nolan O’Connor,” Strathmore said. “That’s an interesting name, but you don’t look Irish. Tell me about it.” Jimmy Snodgrass and I weren’t even at the table anymore, it was just the two of them.

  “Not much to tell. It’s just a name.” Nolan’s voice took on a sultry quality, and she fluttered her eyelashes a lot. I wondered where this was going. On the ride down she’d wanted a plan, for each of us to play a role and to work some sort of an information con. I favored a more direct route: just ask the man some questions and see what developed.

  I decided to get us back on track. “Tell me about your gun.”

  “You like guns too, son?” The word son had the barest beginning of condescension in it.

  “Yeah. I like guns.”

  He stroked the wooden stock. “This is a Perazzi. That’s an Italian make. Same as that Beretta you carried in a little bit ago.” Score one for Fagen Strathmore and his eyes that didn’t miss even the tiniest detail.

  “Wanna sell it?” Score zero for me with a weak comeback.

  Jimmy Snodgrass snorted. “Shit, boy, he just bought it. Not ten minutes ago.”

  “So it’s not for sale?” I said.

  Strathmore had been about to say something else to Nolan, but instead turned to address me. He fixed his full attention my way, a penetrating gaze that gave me just a taste of why he was an extremely wealthy and powerful individual. “Oh, it’s for sale. It just depends on what the deal is.” His voice was calm and deadly serious, and had lost all traces of cornpone.

  “How much do you want for it?” I said.

  “I asked you first, what deal do you have in mind?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what kind of deal you want. I just want to know how much money for the gun.”

  He smiled at me but it wasn’t friendly. “I don’t care about the money, son. Money’s just for keeping score. The deal’s what I’m interested in.” His voice remained quiet.

  “I don’t have any deal, just money.”

  “Then I’m not interested. I got enough of that.”

  A Mexican guy in a tuxedo walked by carrying a tray of drinks. Fagen Strathmore signaled to him and ordered four Bloody Marys. I didn’t know if they were all for him or if we each got one. He hadn’t asked.

  “So, sugar, tell me what brings you to our little club way out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  Nolan got out a cigarette and tapped it on the tabletop, while looking around the room. She sighed. “Boredom, I guess. There’s only so much to do in the city. It’s the same people and the same places. I’m sure you know how it is.” She put the cigarette in her mouth and waited.

  Strathmore pulled out a Dunhill lighter that could double as a cutting torch and lit her smoke. “It never gets boring around here. Especially with someone like yourself in attendance.”

  Nolan fluttered her eyelids and started to reply when she was interrupted by a presence looming over the table.

  It was blond and female, and held a half-empty martini glass. “What. The fuck. Is going on here?”

  She stood behind Strathmore, hands on her hip, wearing a short, black skirt and a sleeveless denim top. I gathered from her stance and his reaction that they were together. Tall and lingerie-model pretty, she looked to be in her mid-thirties. Her breasts were obvious upgrades, D-cups that appeared as moveable and pliant as Mount Kilimanjaro. Diamonds and gold and other shiny things bobbled off her like candy canes on a Christmas tree. The legs belonged to a professional athlete or dancer, not an ounce of anything extra and curved in all the right places. The expression on her face belonged to a dental hygienist I used to date right about the time she found me in a compromising position with her second cousin, a Miss Waco runner-up.

  “Hello, Corrine.” Strathmore kept his composure. “Where you been?”

  “Don’t you ‘hello, Corrine’ me, you bastard,” the woman said. “I’ve been talking to your fucking worthless son, Roger, trying to get some fucking opera tickets out of him so I can take the girls from bunco to see that goddamn Spanish faggot everybody’s raving about.” The movement was subtle but I noticed that the three of them—Jimmy, Strathmore, and Corrine—collectively rolled their eyes at the mention of Roger.

  Strathmore fiddled with the lighter, spinning it around in his hand. “Let me handle Roger. I pay for all that damn artsy shit anyway. I’ll get your tickets.”

  “Damn right you’ll handle Roger.” Corrine took a swallow of her drink and turned her attention to us, specifically Nolan. “And who are you, darling? I don’t believe we’ve met.” She placed a hand on her taut bosom and gasped. “And however do I love your top. I’ve heard such wonderful things about the couture section at Wal-Mart. Or did you get that at Target?”

  Nolan kept cool. “Well, hello to you too. We were having just the most delightful time visiting with your father here.” She pointed her cigarette at Strathmore, who looked like he had all the paternal instincts of a foreign exchange student moonlighting as a sperm donor.

  Some signal passed between Strathmore and Jimmy because the latter popped to his feet and began murmuring to Corrine, a soft tone, soothing. Before I knew it, he had her by the hand and was leading her out. As she walked away she scratched at something on the back of her neck, using her middle finger. Classy.

  “That was my wife. She’s feeling poorly, you’ll have to excuse her.” The Bloody Marys arrived and we each got one. Fagen took a drink and smiled. “Now where were we?”

  I drained half of mine. “You were just about to tell me about
the building on Gano Street you’re trying to lease and why it was the last place that a guy name Charlie Wesson was seen before he ended up dead in a crack house.” I took another sip. “Thanks for the drink, by the way.”

  Strathmore didn’t scare easily. He ignored me and spoke to my partner. “Darling, who is this guy?”

  Nolan blew a plume of smoke across the table. “Tell us about Charlie Wesson. Tell us why someone would want to kill him.”

  Strathmore finished his drink and stood up. “I’m going to leave now.” The smile never left his face. “Say, you two never said who your host was for today. Or are you members here?”

  I leaned back in my chair and did my best to look relaxed. “We’re here as guests of Mr. Coleman Dupree.”

  That was the money shot. Strathmore sat back down and took a sip of his empty drink, ice clinking against ice. The smile never left his lips, but his eyes told a different story. “What is it you want?”

  “I want to know who killed Charlie Wesson.”

  “I don’t know any Charlie Wesson.”

  “Charlie Wesson knew who you were. He came over to see you, the Big Man, at the building on Gano Street on Monday afternoon. He wanted to meet you.”

  “I wasn’t at any building on Gano Street. I haven’t been down there in years.”

  Nolan leaned forward and put her cigarette out. “That’s funny then. If you weren’t at the building, then how come there’s a picture of you there?” I smiled. I was about to say the same thing but she beat me to it. It was a bluff, of course, but he didn’t know that.

  Real poker players don’t blink. They often get a thin trickle of sweat down the side of the hairline, but they don’t blink. A pinprick of moisture meandered its way down Strathmore’s temple, but his eyes held steady.

  “I don’t know this Wesson fellow or Coleman Dupree.”

  “Dupree’s an entrepreneur, like you. Sure you don’t know him?” I smiled and took another slug of my drink.

  “No. I don’t know who he is. And the only time anybody took my picture recently was at city hall, last week. I was with the mayor and the city council. And the chief of police.” He enunciated the last very carefully, making sure I caught the implied threat in every syllable. “Some award, the council was giving me. Lots of folks from South Dallas there; maybe this Dupree fellow was one of them.”

  I smiled. “How do you know Coleman Dupree is from South Dallas?”

  “Well, I—” He started to say something but stopped, aware of his gaffe. The eyes, the gaze that launched a thousand office buildings, clouded, just for a moment. Even the Big Man made mistakes.

  “Hmm.” I scratched the side of my head. “Wonder what the mayor and chief of police would think about that?” I quit talking when I saw Strathmore start to grin. Something cold and metallic poked in my ear and I heard the hammer cock back on a revolver.

  “Now then, I think it’s a good idea if you two left,” Strathmore said. People moved about in front of us, walking, talking, and watching shooters blast pigeons outside. I guessed that somebody with a gun stuck in his ear wasn’t that big of a deal at the CenTex Paloma Club.

  Strathmore started talking again. “It would probably be best if you two forgot about me and this Coleman Dupree fellow and that other guy … you know, the dead one.” He stood up and threw the shotgun over his shoulder. His sport coat shifted and I could see the pistol he carried on his right hip. “And one more thing. If somebody has done something stupid like some techno-computer bullshit and made me look like I’m in a picture with some fucking crack dealer, it would probably be best if that picture and all the negatives were to disappear.”

  I started to say something about how if it were a computer picture there wouldn’t be any negatives, but I thought better of it. The gun barrel left my ear and Jimmy Snodgrass came into view, a shooting vest draped over his right forearm keeping the pistol out of sight. “Get out. Now.”

  Nolan and I stood up and left.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  No one accosted us on the way out, no more guns stuck into ears or up our asses or anywhere else, no shots fired or anything. Fortunately, I remembered to grab Delmar’s shotgun off the rack. I’d rather face Coleman Dupree, Jimmy Snodgrass, and the hired guns from yesterday than Delmar had I forgotten his Beretta. I stowed the weapon in the trunk of the Mercedes and navigated my way through growing throngs of cars now crowding the parking area. Nolan tapped me on the elbow and pointed out a black Cadillac sport-utility vehicle parked to one side of the clubhouse. The license plate read STRATH1.

  She said, “Bet that’s Fagen’s car, whaddya think?”

  “Uh-huh. Wonder what sweet little Corrine drives?”

  Nolan looked back at the clubhouse. “Probably a broom. With leather seats and a CD changer.”

  I squinted at the bumper stickers plastered on the back of the Caddy. You can learn a lot about somebody by what they put on their car. Back when I had a car, before it got shot up, I didn’t have any stickers. I don’t want anybody knowing anything about me.

  Fagen Strathmore struck me as a play-the-cards-close-to-the-vest kind of guy so I was surprised when I saw the half dozen on the rear of his truck. In addition to ones for the local country radio station and a pro-business congressional candidate, there was one that read “The Trinity Vista—the time for tomorrow is today.” It sat next to a Texas Hunting Association sticker.

  Trinity Vista … there was that name again.

  Nolan poked me in the ribs. “Uh, I think we’d better get going.”

  I looked up. Jimmy Snodgrass stood on the back steps, shading his eyes from the sun with one hand, pointing at us with the other. Two men stood on either side of him. Very large and mean-looking men. They started toward us with an ass-kicking look on their faces.

  I threw the car into drive, punched the accelerator, and fishtailed it out of the parking lot, throwing a cloud of gravel all over them and Fagen Strathmore’s shiny truck. We burned down the caliche road and blew past the men at the front gate. I pointed the star of Daimler Benz toward the interstate and drove.

  After a few miles we came to a section of land with no trees, just endless acres of milo and alfalfa as green as Ireland, growing tall under a cloudless sky. The massive irrigation sprinklers used to supplement Mother Nature’s output looked like aluminum toothpicks caught between the endless blue horizon and the emerald earth. I punched the accelerator on the Benz, and the car lunged forward. The carpet of vegetation became a blur. A few more miles whizzed by before a flashing stoplight in the distance caused me to slow down.

  We stopped at the intersection of two no-name farm-to-market roads. There was nothing there, except for a couple of trees and dirt and an ancient aluminum travel trailer. A blackened smoker stood nearby, next to a couple of faded picnic tables underneath the shade of a live oak tree. A hand-painted sign on the trailer said “Bobby’s Bobby-Que—the Best in Navarro County.”

  Nolan started shaking her head even before I pulled into the dirt parking area. “Nope, no, uh-uh. Don’t even think about. I am not eating there. Bet they’ve never even heard of a health inspector.”

  I tried for humor. “Maybe they have squab on the menu today.”

  “I’ve seen enough dead pigeons.”

  I hopped out of the car. “It’s a perfect day for a little rural al fresco dining experience.”

  Nolan reluctantly followed. The aroma of slow-cooked meat wafted over us, tangy and smoky. I ordered two blue plate specials—brisket and ribs, pinto beans and coleslaw on the side—and two Dr Peppers. The meat was so tender you could cut it with a harsh word. Nolan finished before I did.

  We didn’t talk much on the way back. I thought about Coleman Dupree and Fagen Strathmore and what the next move should be. I thought about Vera Drinkwater getting ready to bury her little brother. I thought about a lot of things, and came to conclusions on none of them.

  At the Dallas County line, some idiot had rammed a Trans Am into an Isuzu. Both cars h
ad flipped, taking out two of the four lanes and backing up traffic for miles. While we puttered along Nolan told me the story of her elderly Cadillac Eldorado and how that came to be her sole means of transportation. The tale began with a former Houston call girl named Penelope, Nolan’s ex-husband, and a South Texas gun runner for one of the El Paso drug cartels. It ended with Nolan fleeing north one night in her second cousin’s Caddy. Her usually immaculate Toyota Camry was full of blood and brain matter from the El Paso shooter and the hooker. The bullets used to kill them came from the nine-millimeter she’d bought from the SAPD when she’d quit. Her weapon and the ex-husband who had begged to borrow the car allegedly for a job interview were nowhere to be found. Old friends on the force suggested she might want to head out of town for a while since the cartels had started to operate with impunity far north of the border and the dead gunman was a grand-nephew to the head of the El Paso branch. Just to be safe. Hence the quick trip to Dallas. Things would cool down once they ran the ex to ground, they assured her.

  I nodded at the appropriate times but made no comment, impressed with her coolness over the whole affair and more than a little miffed that my partner had not thought to tell me any of the details. I tried to blame that on the pain medication for his cancer.

  When we arrived back at the office it was late afternoon. I wanted to ask Davis about the Trinity Vista but he was gone. I shuffled into my office and sat down, pondering the next move. Nolan disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a sixteen-ounce Miller High Life Genuine Draft and two avocado green water glasses. She split the beer and handed me one of the tumblers.

  “It’s Saturday night,” she said. “You got big plans?”

  “See Ernie for a while. Then a pizza and HBO probably. What about you?”

  “The same.” She took a sip of beer. “I need to look for a place to rent.”