Long Fall from Heaven

by George Wier

  He walked away that night. Walked away from California.

  Death very nearly found him in a jailhouse in a small Nevada desert town at the hands of a sheriff’s deputy who didn’t care to stomach his smell. The deputy had tried to use him for a punching bag. Micah took the blows one by one up to the moment he realized the man wasn’t going to stop until his target ceased breathing. He then reached out two wiry arms past the deputy’s flailing limbs, applied an exact amount of pressure to his carotid artery, and relieved the deputy of consciousness long enough to liberate himself from jail, town, and the sovereign State of Nevada.

  Eastward he walked, over mountains and across plains. He swam rivers, camped out with the ragged flotsam of humanity, and stopped when the Atlantic lapped at his ankles. There being no place further to go, he came home to Texas.

  Four years had passed in a twinkling. His father was dead and his mother had remarried and moved off to Ohio. The town of Wilford was a husk of its former self. The home place, a two-bedroom shotgun house, was still standing empty. He took up residence. Two weeks after he hit town, he got a job at the local jail. Within five years he was the county sheriff. The locals, insular and suspicious of what they, in this late day, still called “the laws,” liked his diplomatic approach to law enforcement.

  In 1979 he attended a symphony concert at Sam Houston State University, fifty miles away. The highlight was a Juilliard harpist named Diana Sulbee. He watched her from the first row, enchanted with her beauty and with the way she merged herself, body and soul, with the music that flowed as clear and crystalline as a cold mountain stream from her precious, slender fingers.

  After the concert he went backstage, spoke to her briefly, and then surprised himself by asking her to dinner. Inexplicably, she accepted. They were married five days later before the Justice of the Peace in Wilford.

  For two of the briefest and most beautiful years of his life, Micah Lanscomb was happy. That happiness was shattered when Diana was killed by an eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer rig whose driver failed to yield the right of way on an Interstate 45 feeder ramp and plowed over her sports car.

  His wife’s death was his penance, Micah felt, for having let Susan Glover die that dark California night all those years before.

  After the funeral—which was the largest gathering ever seen in the isolated and insular little town—Micah handed his badge and his gun to his senior deputy and pressed the keys to his truck into the bronzed hands of the Mexican grave digger. Then he began walking, yet again. This time south.

  Micah walked until he met ocean once more.

  Below the Galveston seawall in the turbulent waters of the Gulf, he purged himself of everything, both ugly and beautiful, and very nearly drowned in the bargain when a rip-current pulled him further out to sea. But he knew, instinctively, anything good that comes must be paid for, and sometimes the price is dear.

  The man who emerged from the waves and the rocks was a different man. A man finally at peace with himself. And it was that man upon whom Cueball Boland would, in carefully measured doses over the course of time, ladle out his trust and his devotion.

  [ 4 ]

  Jack Pense was murdered in a warehouse that belonged to the DeMour family. The DeMours were Old Island Money like the Moodys and the Kempners and the Sealys. In Galveston old money was quiet money—money that kept its own counsel in the shuttered mansions in the city’s historic East End and in a few walnut-paneled boardrooms in the unprepossessing buildings within a couple of blocks of Broadway. Old Money in Galveston was Big Money. Micah knew that back in the fifties the Moody Bank, headquartered in its sedate five-story brick building on Market Street, held a mortgage on every Hilton hotel on the face of this round green Earth. Yet the vast majority of Americans had never even heard the name. People in Galveston liked it that way, that Old Money was both big and quiet. No one would be pleased that the killing occurred at the DeMour warehouse. It would bring light and attention where none were wanted.

  It took only one look at Jack Pense’s body for Micah to know what had happened. “Man, oh man,” Rusty Taylor said. “Why would somebody do that? Could’ve been me, you know.” Rusty was the rounds guard. He drove a little Daihatsu pickup truck from site to site, checking on things, making sure there were no open doors or bashed-in windows. Cueball had a definite policy about checking on his stationary guards. The rounds guard had to verify by sight the safety of every stationary guard on each round, which was how Rusty had found Jack’s body.

  “I know it could have been you, Rusty,” Micah said, “but it wasn’t. Go get yourself a cup of coffee. You’re going to be awake for the next five or six hours at least.”

  “For what?” Rusty asked.

  Micah turned and looked at the man and decided not to be sarcastic, which had become increasingly difficult as the years drifted on by. “You’re going to have to answer the same set of questions fifty times, is why.”

  “Oh,” Rusty said. But before he turned away he asked the question again, only differently. “Why would anybody breaking in to rob the place, kill the security guard after tying him up? Doesn’t make any sense is all.”

  “Because whoever did it knew him.”

  Rusty shivered. “Oh,” he said, and walked away.

  Micah Lanscomb turned and regarded the mortal remains of Jack Pense.

  Jack’s face was a mass of bruises and contusions. It barely resembled him. He had been pummeled with either a tire iron or a stick of some kind. That would be the coroner’s job to figure out. Jack’s chest, what Micah could see of it through his torn shirt, was one massive bruise. The instrument of torture was not apparent at the scene.

  The body was hours cold. Micah did a quick estimate and placed Jack’s death sometime between three and four a.m. Between the autopsy findings and Rusty’s shift report, that figure would likely be narrowed down.

  Micah turned away from Jack Pense’s body. His eyes came to rest on a desk by the loading dock. This was where Jack filled out his own shift report every night. It was where he drank his coffee, where he set out from on his rounds of the warehouse on those nights when his back wasn’t giving him fits and he felt good enough to stretch his legs. In the dead of night when the place was all quiet, you could hear every sound made in the building from Jack’s desk.

  Jack’s thermos was there next to the phone. Micah lifted a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket, spread it across his hand and lifted the thermos. With the other hand he brought up a corner of the cloth, covered the lid and twisted it open.

  Micah sniffed then smiled.

  “Good old Jack,” he said and took a drink.

  The coffee, laced as it was with a healthy dose of Irish Cream, went down just fine, even though it was now lukewarm. For good measure, he downed the rest of it in one long chug.

  Micah turned and looked back toward the body.

  “God bless you, Jackie Pense,” he said. “Thanks for the drink. Now rest in peace, old son.”

  • • •

  Micah placed the 911 call. After he hung up, he knew he had five minutes, tops, to make a quick inspection of the warehouse to determine if anything had been rifled, broken into, or stolen. He knew that dock employees would begin arriving at any time. He left the lifeless body of Jack Pense where Rusty had found him and made a slow transit around the warehouse.

  He was dwarfed by pallets of freight stacked up to forty feet, shrink-wrapped like ancient Egyptian mummies—truck and tractor parts, whole loads of lawnmowers just in from Japan and Malaysia. They made for aisle after aisle of hard consumables and big-boy toys.

  At the end of the aisle a flight of narrow wooden stairs led upward into the gloom. A door stood open at the top, revealing a deep well of darkness beyond.

  “Now that’s not right,” Micah said aloud. He felt a chill then.

  He had no more than a few minutes before the cops would arrive. If he hustled, maybe he’d have enough time to check it out and report to Cueball before they came.
/>
  [ 5 ]

  Galveston police lieutenant Leland Morgan was annoyed but not surprised—annoyed because Boland’s people had called their boss first, annoyed too that Boland had sent that Lanscomb clown over before he called the P.D. But he was not surprised because he knew that Cueball had been a cop himself. And you can’t teach an old dog any new tricks.

  Cueball Boland was on site when Morgan arrived. Jack Pense’s body was being rolled out to the ambulance. It would go to Houston and the state forensics lab for an autopsy. Morgan looked toward the back of the warehouse. Boland was leaning against the rear wall. Morgan walked over to meet him.

  “Tell me how you figure in this deal,” he said.

  Boland gave him a jaundiced look. “My guard was killed here. My employee.”

  “And?”

  “The DeMour family owns three warehouses on the island. Besides doing their security, I’m their property manager. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I already knew that.” Morgan was a tall, slim, middle-aged man with a smooth face and steely eyes. He tried to fix Boland with one of the patented stares he’d copied from Clint Eastwood movies, stares that had proven effective on those occasions when the suspect he was interviewing wasn’t too bright. But in this instance, he felt his eyes blinking in spite of himself.

  “Then why not cut the crap, Morgan? You can’t pull anything on me I haven’t used myself a thousand times before.”

  “I don’t know,” the man said thoughtfully. “Instinct, I guess. You know, I should like you better than I do since you’re an ex-cop and all. And I should trust you more too. But I don’t. Never have.”

  “Remind me to grieve over that when I have time,” Cueball said easily.

  “Yeah, right. How about this Pense guy?”

  Cueball shrugged. “A very good hand. Dependable, trustworthy.”

  “What’s his background?”

  “Jack was born on the island. The family moved to Houston when he was young. He retired from a high-stress security company in Houston because of a back injury, but he couldn’t make it on disability and came to me for a sit-down job, which is what he was doing for me mostly. I had him working with a younger man who’s the rounds officer. Jack had a good record. He had no allegations of theft or excessive force. He was a low-key kind of guy who wasn’t averse to using a little diplomacy. Smart enough, but uneducated. He used a lot of painkillers because of the back thing, but I never saw that they affected his judgment.”

  “So you knowingly hired a drug addict as a security officer?”

  Cueball decided he was getting enough of this fool. “No, asshole, I knowingly hired a good man who was up front about his pain problems and his prescription drug use.”

  Morgan’s already pale face went white. “You push it, don’t you? Talking that way to a cop, I mean?”

  Cueball gave him a cold smile. “I’ve got a special Texas Ranger commission in my pocket right now, so it’s one cop talking to another. If you don’t like my style of expression, complain to your local senator. Or maybe the governor. They’re both good friends.”

  Morgan made a sour face and nodded. “So that’s how it is, huh? Friends in Austin?”

  “No. Old friends downtown here in Galveston, which amounts to the same thing.”

  Morgan wheezed a little and changed tack. “Who rents the warehouse from the DeMours?”

  “Gulfway Discount Stores. You’re familiar with them, right?”

  Morgan nodded. “Yeah. A straight-up outfit, as far as I know. What about Pense’s family?”

  “His parents are dead, but he has a live-in girlfriend. Micah can give you her name and address. I’ll have Myrna photocopy Pense’s employment file for you. Believe it or not, we’re on the same side here. I’m not hiding anything. Aside from the fact that this is bad for my business, Pense was a decent guy, and I take it personally.”

  “Good enough. I’ll send somebody over to your house this afternoon to get it.”

  “One more thing,” Boland said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Now that you know I have friends where a man needs them, it might be wise of you to cultivate me a little. I may be able to open some doors you can’t. I’m not suggesting that you should kiss my ass. Just a little courtesy and benefit of the doubt would do.”

  Morgan regarded him thoughtfully for a few moments, then said, “Something to think about. You know, Boland, you’re not the only person with Island connections.”

  “That’s right. I remember now. It seems to me Vivian DeMour helped get you promoted to lieutenant, didn’t she?”

  “Now how the hell would you know that?”

  “I know everything that happens on this island,” Cueball said. “Now, what about my warehouse?”

  “You can let authorized people in as the need arises. Keep the immediate crime area taped off and people out of it. Other than that, business as usual. This had to be personal. Nobody killed this guy to steal a pallet full of lawn mowers.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Boland said.

  • • •

  Cueball watched Morgan walk away. He waited until the cop’s city-issue Ford Crown Victoria was gone from sight before reaching into his back pocket for his radio. He keyed the mic. “Micah. You there?”

  “Here, boss,” Micah’s slow drawl came back to him over the air.

  “Any of the cops still in that room?” Cueball asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Alright. Lock it down tight then. I’m going to dust that damned safe myself and lift any prints that turn up.”

  “And do what with them?”

  “I’m going to have a friend in the Bureau up in Houston run anything I find through the national fingerprint database.”

  “What about Morgan?” Micah asked. “Do you plan to tell him?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  “Sure, but not right now. I’ve got to think it through first.”

  “So start thinking,” Micah said.

  “I will. You go break the news to Jenny.”

  “I get all the fun stuff, huh?”

  Cueball sighed and felt a little ashamed of himself. “I don’t relish seeing women cry. But I do plan on going to the funeral home with her tomorrow. I imagine I’ll have to be the one who winds up paying for Jack’s funeral service. But for now, I want you to be the one to tell Jenny. You were closer to Jack than I was. Later, she’ll be glad it came from you.”

  • • •

  The sun was two hours above the horizon when Micah knocked quietly on the door to the apartment Jack Pense shared with Jennifer Day. It was all Jenny’s place now, and Jack’s meager belongings were hers.

  She didn’t cry when he told her. Instead she looked at Micah Lanscomb with shocked, baby-blue eyes. Her face went stony and her jaws clenched together like a pair of vice-grips straining at their tolerance point. Then she did the complete opposite of what Micah had imagined. She turned, sat down on the sofa with a defeated sigh and turned off the television with the remote. “Could you make us a pot of coffee, Micah?” she asked in a soft nasal voice that made her sound like a little girl.

  [ 6 ]

  Longnight never knew why he chose the Texas Coast. Not that he cared. Nor did he know why he chose Galveston, but as it turned out it was a perfect choice. He had recovered his money less than a week after staging an escape from the clinic. It was in a bus station storage locker he’d rented when he began to suspect the government might be close behind him—the last vestige of his inheritance, a cool seventy thousand dollars. It had been good thinking to stash it away somewhere safe. The Ohio murders had made national headlines, and he’d gotten himself caught. But then the Feds had found his research notes in his apartment, the Army had stepped in and he had been moved to Virginia and put in with the loonies.

  His car, a very clean two-year-old Packard convertible coupe, had been purchased in
Memphis. In Little Rock he picked up an expensive elk hide suitcase at a department store and three off-the-rack suits in one of the town’s better men’s shops. He also bought a shaving kit, some other needed toiletries, several white dress shirts and a dozen pair of underwear. He spent the night in Texarkana, not bothering to sample the delights of the town’s famous bordellos. The next morning he was up early and on the road. He pulled into Beaumont at a little past two in the afternoon and drove around a little, getting the feel of the town. It was not to his liking.

  After a quick lunch, he drove along the coast to the west, stopping only when the highway came to a dead end at a big sign that said “Galveston Ferry.” He had heard of the town and found the name intriguing. The wait for the ferry was only about five minutes, and the ride over to the Island but a couple of miles. When the boat docked, he drove off and followed the road across a narrow strip of barren land that marked the eastern extremity of the island. The road dead-ended at a broad, four-lane street that was named Seawall Boulevard. He turned right. A mile and a half later, almost as if by instinct, he pulled up in front of the great Hotel Galvez, the town’s most regal hostelry.