Long Fall from Heaven

by George Wier

  He checked in under Randall Talos, a phony name, and slipped the desk clerk a five to get a small suite at the front of the building overlooking the Gulf. The desk clerk rang the bell and a young Negro bellhop of perhaps fifteen appeared from around the corner and began helping him with his bags.

  On the way up the elevator, Longnight made it a point to get the bellhop’s name: Tad Blessing.

  Up in his fifth floor room, he gave another five to the bellhop and said, “Where’s the action, Tad?”

  Tad Blessing was a brash-looking kid with a quick manner and a feral gleam in his eye. The kid didn’t even bother to size his guest up. Galveston was that kind of town. “What kind of action you want?” he asked. “Women? Gamblin’?”

  “Maybe later on the women.”

  “Well, if you do need some female company, Post Office Street is the place. There’s some fine lookin’ girls on Post Office Street. Some really nice houses there. If you don’t want to leave your room, just have the desk clerk send me up and I can have one of the ladies come and visit a spell.”

  “I may do it. How about the gambling?”

  The kid took him by the arm and led him to the window and pointed directly across the street to a large building situated at the end of a pier that stretched a hundred yards or so out over the Gulf. “Ya see that?”

  “Yeah. I wondered what it was when I drove up.”

  “That there is the Balinese Room. Finest nightspot between Brownsville and Miami.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. That enclosed catwalk makes it awful tough to raid—not that anybody’s gonna to be trying to raid it. There’s a trinket shop in the land end of the catwalk, and that’s where you have to get approved. No problem. Just wear a tie and coat or a tux and you can get into the nightclub without any problem. Artie Shaw and his band are playin’ there this week. Sinatra was there a month or so ago.”

  “How about the gambling?”

  The kid shrugged. “The casino is in back of the nightclub. Last room out over the water. But it’ll be tougher to get into. Act reasonable and don’t push it if they say no. That could be...dangerous. Just come back again the next night and ask all over again. Quietly keep at it, that’s the ticket. It’ll help a little if you tell ‘em you’re staying here at the Galvez.”

  “Is the casino honest?” he asked the kid.

  The kid laughed a cynical little laugh. “What’s honest? The odds is so much in favor of the house in casino gambling that only fools would cheat. But there’s no rigged tables or shaved dice or any of that crap at the Balinese Room.”

  “Who runs it?”

  “The Maceo brothers.”

  The name was vaguely familiar to the man. He nodded and slipped the kid a couple more bucks.

  The boy smiled and said, “If you want something, call downstairs and ask for me.”

  He riveted the boy with his eyes and spoke in a silky voice that held a hint of challenge. “About sending that girl up...Are you a pimp, Tad? Is that how you think of yourself?”

  The kid laughed again, and this time it was an honest laugh, one free of cynicism. “It’s a rough world, and a fellah’s got to get by. So I just think of myself as whatever I need to be whenever I need to be it.”

  The man winked. “I feel exactly the same way. How about bringing me up a bottle of good Canadian whiskey and some ice?”

  “Sure ‘nough.”

  “I’ll be in the bath. Just set it on the table and we’ll settle up tomorrow. Will that do?”

  “Right as rain.”

  “You’re a good lad, Mr. Blessing,” he said with a hearty laugh. “May your life be long and prosperous.”

  • • •

  He dressed with care, donning one of his white dress shirts, a tie of mottled gold and burgundy, and a dark blue double-breasted suit of all-weight worsted wool pinstripe. He turned off all the lights except for one small table lamp and sat beside it enjoying a whiskey over ice. At precisely eight he arose and left the room. Down in the lobby he paused for a moment to take a single white carnation from the bouquet on the grand piano. Out in the street he threaded the carnation’s stem into his lapel. He crossed the street.

  An older couple came up to the door of the catwalk just as he approached. He swept the door open for them and stood to one side. As they entered, they smiled gratefully and nodded their thanks. What they saw was a tall, slim, handsome man with brown hair, a shy smile, and a diffident manner, which was exactly what he wanted them to see.

  Before he followed, he took one last deep breath of the cool air, relishing the salty, earthy odor of the island. He looked around him. Far out on the Gulf, hundreds of lights glittered where vessels from half the nations of the earth stretched to the horizon, riding the swells, each awaiting its entry to the Houston ship channel. Heavy cars whisked up and down the street, stopping to let out their richly dressed passengers at the casinos and nightclubs that dotted the seawall. The soft strains of Shaw’s Begin the Beguine drifted out above a moonlit beach while palm trees rustled softly in the gentle breeze. Could there be a more glamorous time and place? He thought not. The whole world was mad with war, and the night was alive with promise. He might have a few glasses of champagne. He might strike up an interesting conversation. He might even come across an alluring young woman who wanted to dance. He might...

  He smiled happily and walked down the catwalk toward the famed Balinese Room.

  [ 7 ]

  The beaten and lifeless body of Jack Pense. A grieving woman. An opened office that should have been locked. An opened safe which, according to Vivian DeMour, the last remaining member of the family to carry the name, contained nothing of real importance and never had.

  These things troubled Micah Lanscomb, but what made it so much worse was how Jack Pense’s death had clearly affected Cueball Boland. If it affected Cueball, there were clear ramifications for Galveston Island. Not that Cueball was the most important man on the Island. He was, however, one of the two most important personages in Micah Lanscomb’s own personal pantheon, a distinction Cueball shared only with Myrna Boland, a woman Micah would easily lay down his life to protect.

  That evening Micah went over to Cueball’s house, a stately old Queen Anne Victorian on Ball Street in the East End. It was their Tuesday night custom to get together for a few drinks after Micah had made the deposit from the day’s pool hall and bar proceeds. They sat on the front porch and sipped Johnnie Walker Black Label and tried to get a handle on things. In the dark fronds of the palm trees, an orchestra of cicadas was tuning up for the long night.

  Myrna appeared and poured half a glass of Johnnie Walker for each of them but took the bottle back inside with her, as if to say “You can have this much, boys, but no more.”

  When she was gone, Cueball asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Micah said.

  “That’s alright. I’ll tell you what you were thinking, seeing as how I know you so well. You’re thinking it was one of my own employees or former employees, aren’t you? You’ve been clutching at the idea like a goddamned south sea islander clutches his kona doll ever since you entered old Dave DeMour’s office.”

  “Maybe I have,” Micah said. “Who else could it have been?”

  Cueball took a sip of scotch and leaned back in Myrna’s wicker settee. “I got the prints back from Washington two hours ago,” Cueball said. “Those boys work quickly.”

  “Well, who the hell do they belong to?”

  “To the one person I thought they’d belong to when I heard Jack Pense was found murdered while on duty.”

  Micah waited.

  “I had the chance to kill the son of bitch who did it twenty years ago up in Dallas. A warehouse, a murder, and a safe. They all point to one man, and the fingerprints confirm it. A con named Harrison Lynch.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Micah said. “So how does he figure into this mess?”

  “He’s Jack Pense’s stepbrother.”<
br />
  “Damn!”

  Cueball nodded. “It’s an old island story, full of rumor and supposition, but the accepted version is that Lindy—one of the DeMour daughters and my old friend Vivian’s sister—got herself pregnant around age fifteen. That wasn’t what you’d call socially acceptable back then, and it wasn’t ordinarily discussed. The family tried to keep it a secret but the child was kidnapped and disappeared just as if it were dead. The kid reappeared years later as part of the Pense family, a lesser but still Old Island family who had moved to Houston.”

  Cueball paused for a moment, thinking. “The Penses moved to Houston after the patriarch lost his money. Later, he apparently lost his mind and killed himself. Harrison Lynch never even knew he was related to the DeMours until much later. The story goes that Harrison was a mean little shit from the day he was whelped. There was no love lost between him and the Pense family. Jack was a straight arrow and Harrison was always in trouble. Jack got the good grades while Harrison alternated between flunking courses and getting two-week expulsions. Then he went from bad to worse and left town. Somewhere along the way Harrison got in a mess out in West Texas, jumped bond, and finally wound up killing a couple of people, one in Dallas and one in Houston.”

  “They sent him up for life, right?” Micah asked.

  Cueball shook his head and drained his glass in one long pull. “Not initially. He got two death penalties, but the Supreme Court moratorium on executions automatically commuted his sentences.”

  “How long has he been out?” Micah asked, and followed suit with his own glass.

  “From the Dreyfus Unit the other side of Houston? Since yesterday morning,” Cueball said.

  [ 8 ]

  After standing in on a night shift for Rusty Taylor—who, as Micah had predicted, spent an entire day at the Galveston police station and needed his rest—Micah took a drive down to the seawall in the company truck. It was six and the sun was a golden ball suspended over the Gulf. There was no traffic. It was his favorite time of day. He stopped in for breakfast at a little diner called Nell’s only to find a message waiting for him. He crossed the street and went down one of the narrow stairways to the beach.

  He shucked his boots, cut across the sand with them over his shoulder, got to the edge of the surf and started walking east. Bits of detritus—sand dollars, small shells, driftwood—littered the beach. Micah walked until he found Homer Underwood. Homer was a beachcomber and an alcoholic. He was probably a drug addict to boot, but Micah loved the crusty old son-of-a-bitch.

  “Hey, Homer. I got a message that you needed to see me. Let me buy you breakfast.”

  “Ahhh! Micah! You can just give me a fiver. I’ll get my own breakfast with it.”

  “Homer, if I give you five bucks, you’ll drink it. It’s too early for booze anyway. Come on. We’re not far from Nell’s. She’ll make us a couple eggs and some sausages.”

  Homer took off his baseball cap, looked out to sea and scratched his head.

  “You want information. I knew you’d be hunting me up anyway, that’s why I left the message.”

  “I want to buy you breakfast too. It’s my duty in life to make sure you eat at least once a week.”

  “Naw,” Homer shook his head slowly. “Nope. Your duty is to find the man who killed Jack Pense. That’s what you’re about. Ain’t it?”

  Micah looked at the old man, gauging him. A slow smile spread across Micah’s face. He couldn’t help it. “Yeah,” he said. “I can’t fool you, Homer. But you asked me to look you up.”

  “It’ll cost you,” Homer said. “We just left downtown Small-change-ville and we’re headed for C-note City. Ain’t we?”

  Micah pulled out his wallet, opened it, fished for a hundred and handed it to Homer. The old man took it, studied it for a minute, then handed it back to Micah.

  “What’s the matter?” Micah asked.

  “I changed my mind about taking your money for this. I think I’ll take that breakfast instead.”

  • • •

  Nell’s had gone through a number of conversions over the years. To hear Cueball tell it, it had been the island’s first coin-op laundry back when he was a kid. A nickel a wash, if you could believe it. Sometime back in the seventies it became a seashell and surfboard shop: a true tourist trap. For the last ten years or so, it had enjoyed the distinction of being first a doughnut shop, then a sandwich place, and most recently a plain old-fashioned diner. There were four tables inside and two small, salt-air weathered tables of wrought iron and gray wood outside under the short overhang. Whenever Micah fed Homer Underwood at Nell’s, they ate outside. Nell wouldn’t hear of having the old varmint sit and eat inside her establishment. He wasn’t exactly right for the image she wanted to convey.

  Homer wolfed his food and Micah tried not to watch. When he was done, Homer wiped his mouth with his weather-stained shirttail and sighed deeply.

  “Got a cigarette?” he asked.

  “Nope. Sorry, old buddy.”

  “That’s fine. That’s fine.”

  “So what do you have for me?”

  Homer Underwood looked off for a few moments, seemingly in deep thought. Then he turned back and fixed Micah with his bright old eyes. “I do know something,” he said. “And let’s just say I know more than is strictly healthy for me, or you, or just about anybody.”

  “I’m listening to you, Homer. I’m hangin’ on every word.”

  “Harrison Lynch.”

  For a moment Micah felt like he’d been hit in the head with a big rubber hammer. “What makes you mention that name?”

  “I may be an old fool, but sometimes I do read the paper. I’ve got newsprint in my blood, if you didn’t know. Last week I read about Lynch’s upcoming release.”

  “Go on...”

  “Micah, how old would you say I am?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Homer. ‘Bout fifty-five? Sixty?”

  Homer leaned back in his chair and put his hands up on his balding, sun-baked pate. “Almost seventy. I was born in 1917. I’ve lived on this island all my life. I’ve ridden out every hurricane that’s come along. Never evacuated a single time no matter what those assholes at the weather service said. I was here back when World War II ended. I remember that every fire truck in town, every police siren, every church bell and every car-horn was wailin’ or ringin’ or honkin’ on VJ-Day. But before that, in the late fall of ‘43 something hit this town and it wasn’t no hurricane.”

  “Fall of ‘43?”

  “You ain’t old enough to remember. Let me tell it and don’t steal my thunder.”

  “Sure, Homer,” Micah said.

  “As I was saying, late fall of ‘43. November and December. There was a big bunch of killings here on the island. Eleven deaths that are known about, and that was in a month’s time. One every three days on an average and there could have been more.”

  “Eleven.”

  “Like I say, there could have been more. There was some evidence that a few of the victims were hacked up and fed to the crabs off the South Jetty. There were some transients and winos and what-not who turned up missing, but you know how that goes. Eleven were found for sure, mostly women. The killer started by cleaning out a whole bordello, all the girls including the owner, then began picking off the odd Post Office Street whore now and again. Not too long after that he started killing wholesale. Now you might find it hard to believe that a bunch of killings like that never made the national headlines. But please remember that, first, we were at war. With the war on, the whole country was looking the other way, you know. Second, Galveston at that time was the Riviera of the Gulf Coast. The town needed the business and that kind of press wasn’t welcome. It’s amazing to me that it still never got out, even though I—well, I was a reporter back then.”

  “Yeah. I remember somebody telling me that. They said you used to be something.”

  “I’m still something, although I don’t know what. Anyway, those killings would have made a good story. It
sure would have.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Homer Underwood paused in his eating for a moment. He leaned back and looked out the plate glass window to the deep azure blue of the Gulf beyond. The old man had a somber look about him, as if he were looking for something he’d lost.

  “And?”

  Micah found that he was leaning forward—straining, in fact. He purposefully took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair and waited.

  “I was thinking of someone from back then. It’s someone you’ll have to look into.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Denny Muldoon. He was an FBI agent back in the day.”

  “Muldoon. All right. I’ll remember.”

  “While you’re checking into him, there was another fellow around back then. A Texas Ranger named Bonaparte Foley. Mean as a rattlesnake, that one.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Micah said. “I’m pretty sure Foley is dead.”

  “Yeah. Foley’s dead, but I don’t know about Muldoon. He...he might be. So by now you’re asking yourself what a serial killer from forty plus years ago has to do with a warehouse killing from a couple of nights ago. That’s exactly what you have to find out.”

  Micah laughed and Homer flicked a look at him and smiled. Micah realized Homer must have once been quite a handsome man.

  “You wouldn’t want me to make things too easy for you, now would you?” Homer asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, I think I’ve said enough.”

  Micah nodded.

  Homer prodded his remaining bits of food with a fork then set the fork down. “You know, I’ve worked this island. I’ve lived it. I’ll die this island. And I’m telling you this just once. Little Jacky Pense didn’t die over money or drugs or nothing stupid like that. Now in your mind you’re looking for a born loser named Harrison Lynch because he was Jack Pense’s stepbrother, or so the story went.”

  “But Homer, how do you—”