by Austin Davis
A spindly leg wobbled over the seat-back, the toe of its shoe feeling along the passenger-side window above Wick’s head. “If I can reach the latch with my foot, I’ll accommodate you,” Stroud said.
Wick swatted the shoe wavering in the air over his head. “That’s right, ridicule a man in pain,” he whined.
I told them about Bevo’s second career as a receiver of stolen electronics.
“Bevo’s got stolen goods out at my cabin?” Stroud said, sitting up in the backseat.
“This isn’t good,” said Wick.
“What do you think would happen if Officer Meachum were to stumble on Bevo’s illegal warehouse?” I asked. “It could mean jail time for you, Gill.”
“Clay’s right, Gill,” said Wick. “Deirdre says the ex-pilots are up to something. What if they’re planning to raid the cabin?”
“How would Deirdre-of-the-emus know what the ex-pilots are doing?” I asked.
“Her husband, Mike, pals around with them when he’s not out fishing or cursing his birds. Deirdre sometimes passes me information. That Deirdre’s a good old gal.”
“I hope things didn’t go too rough for her last night,” I said.
“Deirdre can handle Mike,” Wick replied. “She kicks harder than those damn birds.”
“One crisis at a time, gentlemen,” said Stroud. “Let’s concentrate on the Rasmussen case, shall we? We’ve got Scales to depose this morning, and tomorrow we depose Pulaski in Mule Springs.”
“Maybe we should have hired our own pathologist,” I said. “Maybe Pulaski missed something.”
“That’s entirely possible,” replied Wick. “I’ll tell you something not everybody knows about our Mr. Pulaski. Stan-the-Man writes a mean report, and he reads it like he’s Orson Welles playing Sherlock fucking Holmes. He oozes confidence on the stand. But the fact is, Stan Pulaski is an idiot.”
“That son of a bitch needs his bag split and his leg run through it,” grumbled Stroud.
“You see, Clay,” said Wick, “Pulaski didn’t get his reputation as a hot-shot pathologist by being brilliant, but by being for hire. You can’t testify in over four hundred cases and always be right. Pulaski is as crooked as Nyman Scales, or Bevo Rasmussen, for that matter. You can bet he slants his reports.”
“Then why hasn’t he been caught?” I asked.
Wick laughed. “Why isn’t Nyman Scales in jail?” he replied. “Why is Paul Primrose allowed to prosecute cases? Why is Tidwell a judge? Because that’s the way things work, Clay. The system takes care of itself. I thought you would know that, coming from Houston.”
“Even if Pulaski missed something and we caught him on it, the jury wouldn’t care,” said Stroud. “I’ve never seen a jury that didn’t love Pulaski. He flashes them his big shit-eating smile, and they buy his report just because he’s so goddamned smooth.”
“Suppose we had gotten a pathologist,” Wick said. “We couldn’t get him on the stand. The interrogatories, remember?”
“And there’s no chance of help from the judge?” I asked.
Wick shook his head. “Not for us. Not from Wrong Tit Tidwell.”
“All right,” I said as we rolled through the fields toward Tyler, “tell me how Tidwell got that nickname.”
Wick explained, “A few years ago we handled a divorce for a woman who had just given birth to twins.”
“Moe and Flo,” said Stroud. “Ugliest little stumps I have ever seen. I believe the parents were related.”
“Anyway,” said Wick, “the parents had separated before the children were born, and right after the birth, the mother filed for divorce.”
“Irreconcilable differences,” Stroud said.
“There was a custody fight over the twins,” said Wick, “and it was complicated by the fact that both of them were allergic to cow’s milk. The mother was breast-feeding them every three hours or so, one on each side. Gill went to court to get temporary custody for the mother until the divorce could be heard.”
“A. C. Tidwell, the presiding judge, considers himself a mental giant,” Stroud explained. “Most of our judges consider themselves mental giants. There should be a home for mental giants out here.”
“Here’s the kicker, Clay,” said Wick. “Tidwell awarded the boy to the father and the girl to the mother. He split them up.”
“So the boy wouldn’t be able to be nursed by his mother,” I said. “Wouldn’t he have died?”
“Yep,” said Wick. “Either from malnutrition or an allergic reaction to store-bought milk.”
“The wisdom of Solomon,” said Stroud, cackling in the backseat. “Of course, I filed an appeal. I also contacted La Leche. Know who they are?”
“Aren’t they an action group for breast-feeding women?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Wick replied. “They’re a national organization, you know. They showed up by the hundreds at the appellate court when Gill argued the appeal. The appellate court reversed the decision of the trial court and sent the case back to Tidwell.”
“That’s where the court of appeals judges made their mistake,” Stroud said. “They should have spelled out in plain English what they wanted Tidwell to do. But they didn’t, and old A.C. took the reversal to mean he’d given each kid to the wrong parent. So to fix things, he reversed his own ruling, gave the little girl to her daddy and the boy to the mother.”
“You’re joking,” I said.
“Gospel truth,” Stroud said. “I appealed again, on an emergency basis. This all happened in less than thirty-six hours, you understand. This time the breast-feeding folks took the story to the networks.”
“The Today show sent a crew down here,” said Wick. “Tidwell wouldn’t talk to them.”
“A.C. got reversed again, of course,” said Stroud. “This time around, the court told him to let both kids stay with their mother.”
“I don’t believe Flo or Moe actually missed a meal,” said Wick. “Anyway, from then on, old A.C. was known far and wide as Wrong Tit Tidwell.”
“Our relationship with him soured after that,” Stroud said.
“You shouldn’t have called him a syphilitic idiot on national television, Gill,” said Wick. “I think that’s why he’s so down on us.”
“That could have something to do with it,” Stroud agreed.
CHAPTER 34
A FEW MINUTES LATER we topped a rise, and the vast green roofs of the Ninth-Man Ranch spread out below us.
“Mother dog, that’s a big place,” said Wick.
The Ninth-Man was the size of Jenks and much better organized. Giant hangarlike buildings sat amid neat rows of stables. On all sides were rolling pastures, some divided into exercise fields, some into neat little pens, each with a corrugated tin sunroof, for individual horses. Wood fences ran out past the pastures, securing even more land beyond. The whole ranch was painted a bucolic green, and the paint looked fresh. On the roof of the largest building was painted a complicated stick figure, in white. “I take it that’s the ninth man,” I said.
“Check out the torso,” Wick said. The long, squarish body of the figure was composed of lines making up the roman numeral IX.
“Nyman Scales was the ninth of nine children,” Wick explained. “Apparently it was a litter of boys, and the parents ran out of names after number eight. Nyman’s real name is Ninth-Man Scales. Over the years, it’s gotten rubbed down to Nyman.”
“Weird,” I said.
“Yes,” said Wick, “but functional.”
People were bustling among the buildings, trucks unloading, forklifts buzzing in and out of storage sheds, men leading horses along the graveled roadways that surrounded and connected the buildings. Little green golf carts hummed down the gravel roads.
To one side of the wrought-iron gate leading into the compound stood a statue of a colossal rearing stallion, perhaps three stories high. The stallion was built of red brick and framed by a huge golden horseshoe, with the name of the ranch stamped on its arch.
“This mu
st be horse heaven,” said Wick as we drove past the brick horse. Behind it sat a wood-frame Victorian-style house that would have seemed enormous anyplace but here. I parked the Lincoln in front of the house; we walked up onto the porch and rang the bell. An attractive young woman in jeans and a checked workshirt greeted us, saying that we were expected, and that Mr. Scales was waiting for us in the laboratory. She took us outside to one of the green golf carts and drove us past several of the big barns to a one-story brick building with a picture on its side of a cartoon cow smiling and saying “Moooooove over, Mother Nature!”
“What do they do in here?” I asked the girl.
“It used to be a dairy genetics lab,” she said. “Now we work on horses.”
“Better horses for better living,” said Wick.
She let us off at the front door. I knocked, and the door was opened by a tall, wiry man in frayed overalls, workshirt, and a short-brimmed felt hat badly faded from wear. He looked like one of those lean-faced, desperate men in photographs from the Dust Bowl of the thirties, with pale-blue eyes haunted by hunger and mad visions. The ninth man. Stroud shook hands with him.
“Gilliam Stroud,” said Scales. “We meet again.”
“Long time between drinks, Nyman,” replied Stroud.
Scales shook hands with Wick. “Mr. Chandler,” he said, “I understand you are interested in pricks.”
“Only those I represent,” said Wick. “Aside from my own, of course.”
“Bevo tells me you just lost a favorite wall ornament down in Dallas.” Scales took from behind the door a smaller version of the corkscrewed stick that I had given to Deck Willhoit in order to keep Bevo intact. “I’m afraid this one is not as long as the one you lost. It’s from a bull, not a whale. But I would like you to accept it as a gift, with my compliments.”
The pizzle was intended to be a walking stick: A flap on one end was shaped into a handle. Wick balanced the stick in his hand, gave a couple of slashes with it through the air.
“Thank you, Nyman,” he said. “It’s a fine replacement.”
Bevo had told the truth about Scales’s mastery of the preacher-boy s. Every word he spoke was carefully crafted and uttered with the intimate sincerity of a country parson comforting a stricken parishioner.
“We’re all friends here,” said Scales, flashing a scruffy smile. There was a feral quality to it that reminded me of Bevo’s smile, but I saw no diamonds in any of Scales’s teeth.
Wick introduced me to Scales, and we shook hands. It was like sticking my hand in a trash compactor.
“Bevo has mentioned you to me. He says you and my daughter are getting to be friends. You might tell her to pay her old man a visit one of these days.” Scales winked at me.
A chill crept up my spine.
“This way, gentlemen,” Scales said, conducting us down a hallway.
The secretary’s office that we entered was crowded with people sitting on folding chairs, drinking coffee. We shook hands with the court reporter, a ferret-eyed little woman who clutched her stenographer’s machine and kept eyeing the door. Scales introduced us to Vincenzo Laspari, a representative of Associazione Stromboli, who had flown in from Naples for the deposition. Laspari, a trim little man in an Italian suit, gave me a chill smile and a formal handshake that, together with his silence, served to increase the cultural distance between us. The man seated next to Laspari, and rising now to meet us, was Warren Jacobs, counsel for the plaintiff. Jacobs was maybe forty-five, tall and rangy, with wisps of sandy hair combed across his forehead. He looked exactly like Rita Humphrey once described the typical SWAT lawyer: a vampire who played a lot of racquetball.
We shook hands with Jacobs, whose every movement seemed spring-loaded with confidence. He professed it an honor to meet Gilliam Stroud. “Mr. Wortmann of our firm asked me to convey his regards. He speaks very highly of you. He says you taught him everything he knows about tort law.”
“Jimmy Wortmann,” said Stroud. “Do you remember him, Mr. Chandler?”
“I believe I do,” said Wick.
The old man gave Jacobs a suspicious look. “You’re telling me Jimmy Wortmann made good?”
Jacobs cleared his throat. “He is one of the senior partners of our firm, sir.”
Stroud turned to Wick. “You hear that, Mr. Chandler?” he said. “Jimmy Wortmann made good.”
Wick held out his palm. “Pay up, Mr. Stroud.”
Stroud pulled a crumpled five-dollar bill out of a pocket and handed it to Wick. “Who’d ever have thought that kid would have amounted to a rat’s ass?”
“I did,” Wick said, pocketing the bill. “I had Jimmy Wortmann pegged for a rat’s ass the minute I met him.”
They had worked the joke so smoothly that it took Jacobs a moment to catch on. His eyes narrowed, then he smiled at Stroud. “Mr. Wortmann told me to watch out for you. I can see why.”
Scales unfolded chairs for us, and we sat down. Our arrival had interrupted a chat, which now resumed, about the many ways in which horses were murdered for profit.
“A fellow up near Gainesville stuffed Ping-Pong balls into the nostrils of his horse,” said Scales. “You may not know, Mr. Parker, that a horse cannot breathe through its mouth.”
“I didn’t know that,” I replied.
“The horse died, all right, but the owner hadn’t thought up a way to explain how it could have died by asphyxiation in an open field.” Scales chuckled. “He tried to argue that the horse was so badly scared by a crop duster plane, it forgot to breathe. I swear, some of these old boys aren’t as smart as the horses they kill.”
There was another knock at the door, and Paul Primrose, the Mule Springs district attorney, walked into the room, along with a uniformed policeman.
“Howdy, folks,” said Primrose in his high-pitched whine. “What have you got going here, Mr. Scales, a prayer meeting?”
“Holy shit,” said Wick.
CHAPTER 35
“HOWDY, PAUL,” said Nyman Scales. “This is a nice surprise. You fellas come on in and have a seat.”
“Primrose?” said Stroud, rising from his chair. “What in hell are you doing here?”
Primrose smiled as he shook hands with us. He was wearing another string tie, this one with a bolo of clear plastic in which a scorpion was embedded. He introduced his companion, who was the assistant deputy sheriff for Claymore County.
“I was down here on business when I heard about the deposition,” he explained. “You don’t mind if I sit in, do you, Gill? After all, the horses we’re talking about were killed in my county. I’ve got an interest in this case.”
“I most certainly do object,” Stroud said. “This little get-together already looks too much like an undertakers’ convention to please me. You just go take care of your business and let us attend to ours.”
There was a knock at the door. It was Bevo, the last participant, wearing his sharkskin outfit. He had gotten his lank hair trimmed a little, but he still looked like a hayseed in a stolen suit as he clapped Scales on the back and apologized for being late. He shook hands all around, flashing his diamond tooth in his wolf’s smile.
“Well, Mr. DA,” he said, shaking Primrose’s hand. “I haven’t seen you since you tried to pin the murder of that poor Mexican fella on me. Sorry I couldn’t oblige you.”
“It’s okay, Bevo,” Primrose said with a washed-out smile. “You will one day.”
Bevo wanted to let the DA and the policeman sit in on the deposition. “It’s time they found out I’m innocent.” But Stroud insisted that Primrose and his deputy sheriff stay out. Under the court’s rules, one side has to give the other written notice of the intent to include persons other than the parties and their lawyers at a deposition. Jacobs had not sent such a notice, and Primrose had not gotten the court’s permission to attend. The DA knew he would be excluded if Stroud objected. Primrose waved wanly as Scales led the rest of us to another, much bigger room in the genetics lab.
In the center of the concr
ete floor lay a massive slab of what looked like black marble. Above it a jointed metal arm, rigged with pulleys and steel cables, reached into the room through a hole high in the wall. The arm ended in a wicked-looking metal claw, which hovered over the center of the slab. The slab was slightly concave, and there was a drain in its center.
“Homey place you got here, Nyman,” said Wick.
“You folks have a seat,” Scales said. There were folding chairs arranged in a couple of rows to one side of the slab. As we sat down, Scales pushed a button on the wall, and with a low hum the slab began to rise. Scales let it reach the height of a desk, then pushed another button, and the slab stopped moving.
“Mrs. Mears,” he said to the court reporter, “you might like to put your steno machine on the table.”
The reporter clearly did not want to have anything to do with the marble slab. “I’ll be fine right here,” she said, balancing the stenographer’s machine on her lap.
“I don’t blame you,” Scales said. “I suppose it’s a kind of creepy place. We sometimes use the table to gut large animals.” He pointed to the metal claw and winked at Laspari. “There’s a way to make that thing act just like a human arm.” Laspari nodded at him, and I wondered if the Italian understood English.
Scales sat on the marble slab while Wick got the deposition going by asking him the standard identifying questions. Then Wick turned to the case.
“Mr. Scales,” he asked, “do you know Mr. Bevo Rasmussen?”
“I do,” said Scales.
“Will you describe your business relationship with Mr. Rasmussen?”
“He bought some horses from me.”
“Would you characterize your relationship with Mr. Rasmussen as a cordial one?”
Scales smiled. “All my relationships are cordial.”
“Ask him about the night the horses died,” hissed Bevo. Turning to me, he smiled and said, “I want to get out of here quick as possible.”
“Mr. Scales,” said Wick, “has Mr. Rasmussen ever spent the night at your home here?”