by George Wier
• • •
Nestled against the southern end of Galveston Bay is a line of slips for the big ships: the oil tankers and supertankers that fed the ugly refineries, the equally large freighters with their boxcars laden with a variety of products from fingernail clippers to Toyota trucks. Across from the slips the warehouses began. Some of the big companies had their own internal security. Most of the time you never saw these guys at all. Cueball had explained it all to him once when Micah had offered to go after some of the larger accounts that appeared to be just begging for service. “You put a guy in a room with about thirty TV monitors and a VCR tape on constant record and you cycle those monitors through all the cameras you’ve got strung out over about fifty acres of space. You relieve him every eight or twelve hours and what you got is the world’s least expensive security operation.”
“That’s for crap,” Micah said. Cueball had agreed. He didn’t run things that way. His guys moved around constantly, varied their pattern, and were aware of every door, every nook and cranny of every outfit they covered. Plus they wrote reports on the seemingly most innocuous things. Cueball himself read every goddamned report religiously. Cueball was notorious for showing up at any given hour of the day or night—checking things out and letting it be clearly known that there was someone minding the store. The Old Island people who owned some of the bigger warehouses liked it Cueball’s way. As Cueball explained it, they liked the “personal touch.” And Micah had agreed.
• • •
The docks were in full swing. Men walked about with a brisk stride. Front-end loaders moved in smooth but constant motion, carrying away the sheer tonnage of materiel unloaded from the ships by great cranes. The heavily-laden loaders swarmed to their respective warehouses and swarmed back, hungry for another load. And all the while the cacophony of sound carried its own rhythm, a raucous but steady pulse beat. Fifty, a hundred years ago, these same docks would have held longshoremen, stevedores and yelling bosses.
Micah parked his pickup alongside the company and employee vehicles to the side of the warehouse, went around the corner and walked into the cool shade of the building.
He didn’t know any of the men and women he saw there. They worked with a bored and yet mindless familiarity with the various tools of their trade: forklift, broom handle and clipboard. Some looked at him as he passed, a guy in uniform yet not apparently a cop. Someone to disregard. Micah liked it better that way. He nodded at those few who very nearly dared to accost him. Something in his eyes and his taciturn manner convinced them otherwise. He stepped through a doorway with a logo that said “ASG” on it and into an air-conditioned office area. A dumpy-looking woman in her early to mid-sixties with too dark lipstick and blond curls done up by a hairdresser who lacked imagination sat at the counter.
“Excuse me,” Micah said, and the lady turned.
“Yes?”
“Accounting. Please.”
“Oh. Right. Through that door there and up the stairs.”
“Much obliged,” he said, already in motion.
“Any time, honey,” the lady said. “You come see me any time.”
“By the way,” Micah said, pausing in mid-step. “What’s ASG stand for?”
“You know, honey, I don’t rightly know. But that’s who pays the bills.”
“And the paycheck?” he asked.
“Right. And the paycheck.”
Micah passed through the door and down a long corridor lined with offices, most of them open and about half of them vacant except for the obligatory desk, papers, game and fish trophies and the like. Then a long staircase going straight up into darkness.
At the top of the stairs Micah saw a set of batwing doors, each with a round window. He pushed and entered.
• • •
“Help you?” a squeaky voice asked. Micah turned his head. The voice came from a short, elderly man with a broad forehead, silver hair, a hooked nose and a ruddy complexion. He stood up from a low table littered with what appeared to be invoices, a set of double-entry green on deep-green account ledgers, and an old nine-key punch calculator, the mechanical kind. He wiped his brow then placed his hands on his hips and tilted backwards slightly, as if to pop his back.
“I don’t rightly know,” Micah said. “All I know is I’ll have hell to pay if we can’t figure out who to make the check out to and where to send it.”
“What check?”
“For the return of the commissary money.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” the man asked.
“Oh,” Micah said. “You see, when you send money to someone who is in prison these days, you have to do it to their commissary account through a wire system to the Department of Corrections.”
“We don’t do that here,” the man said. “This is an import company. You’re in the wrong place.”
“Oh,” Micah said. “Well, I’m pretty sure this is ASG, only nothing on the account ledger from the TDC says any of the money came from ASG, so there’s my quandary.”
“I don’t get you,” the man said and just stood there.
Micah wiped his own brow. “It gets hot up here, don’t it?” he asked.
“It sure does.”
“My name’s Micah Lanscomb. I help C.C. Boland with the security on the Island.” “This ain’t the Island,” the man said.
“You got that right. Like I said, I’m Micah Lanscomb.” Micah held out his hand and gave the man an expectant look. The man took his hand.
“Hulon Bailey,” he said. “But most people call me Hub. I don’t see how I can help you and I’ve got to handle all these invoices before quitting time.” Hub Bailey traced a finger across an invoice as if looking for something, possibly an out of place decimal point.
“Well, since Harrison can’t be found, the money has to go somewhere,” Micah said. “Cueball told me to return it.”
“Harrison?” Hub Bailey asked.
“That’s right. Harrison Lynch.”
Hub Bailey’s eyes did a little number, as if he were running a mechanical calculation of his own back of his eyes. His eyelids jogged up and down for an instant, his brow furrowed slightly, and he rocked backwards a few inches.
“You alright?” Micah asked.
“Sure,” Bailey said, suddenly bright and interested. Bailey wiped his lips with his sleeve needlessly. “Sure. Have a seat, uh...”
“Micah.”
“Sure. Have a seat, Micah.”
Micah sat across from the man in the little wooden chair. The moment he sat down he felt the hair raise on the nape of his neck and he said the first thing that popped into his head.
“I think maybe Vivian got it all wrong.”
“What’s that you say?” Hub Bailey asked. His eyebrows shot up.
“Nothing, really,” Micah said, and made it a point to yawn. “It’s just that what I’m about to say can’t go beyond this room, alright?”
“Sure. Absolutely, Micah. We don’t talk here, and the walls can’t remember squat.”
Micah paused a moment for drama. “Whenever it comes to matters of family and money, it’s best to do what you’re told and not ask any questions. The only problem is that sometimes you don’t get enough information to carry out an order. I’m sure you’re familiar with that sort of problem, being an accountant and all.”
“Oh, yeah. Man, you sure said it! That’s the whole crux of the problem since Methuselah was a pup!”
“Exactly,” Micah said. “So you’ve got the DeMours and the Penses and you’ve got Lynch, only he’s really a DeMour—but for God’s sake I can’t exactly say that out loud, now can I?” Micah didn’t give Hub Bailey the chance to answer, but instead plunged onward. “So when Cueball says the fifty thousand has to be returned…”
“Fifty thousand?”
“Yeah. Fifty—”
“We never sent Harrison near that much. Unless—”
“Unless?” Micah asked.
There was a terrible, still moment whe
n Micah was afraid that Hub Bailey would realize his error and call up the powers that be and have Micah escorted off or arrested or both, but then in the next instant that fear was transmuted to a species of satisfaction.
“She did it,” Hub Bailey said. “I told her not to! I told her again and again you can’t send that kind of money through the prison system. You just can’t do it. I mean, administratively, they can’t handle that kind of thing. It would raise too many eyebrows.”
“Exactly,” Micah said. “That’s why this has to be done so quietly. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but then again, who would ever know that the pardons and paroles folks would set him free. The money that came back was dropped off in cash at C.C.’s house by a friend of his from Austin. C.C. had to make deposits in less than ten thousand dollar increments so that it wouldn’t raise any eyebrows at the federal level. You know, so that no questions would be raised there and the money be traced back to the prison system and people lose their jobs, if you know what I mean. And so now we’ve got to get it back where it belongs. And I guess that’s where you come in.”
Hub Bailey let his head flop back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling.
“Good God,” he said. “I tried to tell Vivian. I tried to tell her. I thought if she wouldn’t listen to me she might listen to Homer. And now he’s dead.”
“Homer?” Micah asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Hub Bailey sighed. Micah himself breathed an inward sigh of relief. “She was sitting right where you are and asking me to push the funds through…like he would need that much in prison. Like he would ever, ever get out.”
“But he is out,” Micah said.
“Yeah. That’s what I’ve heard.”
“I think he came looking for the truth about his family. And he hasn’t found it yet.” It was the one truthful thing—Micah realized after—that he’d said during his entire visit.
[ 27 ]
The sun was beginning to dip low in the western sky when Cueball rang Vivian DeMour’s doorbell. Vivian herself answered the door. From within came the heady scent of steeping cinnamon tea and the distant rattle of a large outdoor air-conditioner unit. It took quite a bit of power to keep a three-story mansion cool on the Texas coast in high summer, and the DeMour place was one of those mid-nineteenth century homes with fourteen foot ceilings and broad-paned, crenelated windows. But even in the late fall there were warm days, like this one.
“Charles,” Vivian said. “I thought you were never coming.”
“No chance of that, Viv, although I can’t stay long. I think Myrna may be jealous of our friendship.” Cueball gave her his best grin.
“Fiddlesticks to that,” Vivian said. “I’ve known Myrna Hutchins all her life. If anybody’s jealous, it should be me, even though I’m ten years senior to both of you. Now come on in here before I change my mind and send you back home.” Vivian held the screen door open and Cueball stepped into the foyer.
“Myrna’s last name is Boland now,” Cueball said.
Vivian ignored the comment. “I’ve just made some tea,” she said. “Want some?”
Cueball ran his hand through his hair, wiping away the last drying sweat of a long, hot day. “Iced tea sounds fine,” he said. “Especially if it’s laced with something.”
“Maybe I’ll spice it a bit. We could make a game of you trying to figure out what the secret ingredient is.”
“I’ll take it.”
Cueball followed her into her living room, took the high-backed suede chair she gestured towards, and waited.
She was back within three minutes.
“Say,” Cueball said, “this room hasn’t changed a bit since I was a kid, has it?”
“No,” she said, taking the end of the couch next to his chair and setting two mason jars of tea down on the coffee table in front of them. “This was my great-grandfather’s place. After Daddy died…when was that? 1950. After Momma died, Daddy didn’t have the heart to change a damned thing. And after he passed, well, it fell to me, and I couldn’t change it either.”
“Is the whole house like this?”
Vivian laughed. “No. Just the living room, the dining room and the library. The kitchen is all modern now. And my room is Momma’s and Daddy’s old room. I even have an art room up on the third floor. It was my room when I was a kid.”
Cueball took a long quaff of his tea. “Tastes like a hint of absinthe,” he said.
Vivian smiled. Cueball noted that she was holding herself a bit in reserve. She wasn’t showing her poker hand. Yet.
“Say, Viv. There’s a couple of things we need to talk about.”
“Old Island shit, as your friend so charmingly put it?”
“Yeah.”
“Fire away, C.C. I’m ready.”
“I know you are, and that’s what bothers me. Ever since I saw you at Homer Underwood’s funeral, something’s been itching the back of my mind.”
“You want to know how I know Homer.”
“Well, sure. But mostly I need to know about Harrison Lynch. And your sister.”
“Lindy has been dead for twenty years, C.C. I’m alright talking about her and her mistakes.”
“Well, that’s fine then. I’ve never understood much about all that family business of yours. There was talk back in the day. I heard some of it way up in Dallas when I was a cop.”
“You mean,” she said, setting her glass of tea down carefully on its coaster, “you found out who you had really arrested before you had to testify at his trial. I’ve never held that against you, C.C.”
“No, I didn’t know then. I just put it together in the last few days.”
She nodded. “Harrison was a killer. I think Lindy was hoping for an angel, and what she got was a demon instead.”
“Well, would you mind telling me the story? And not the story that’s been told outside your front door or to the neighbors, but the real one.”
Vivian DeMour leaned back on the sofa, laced her hands together over her belly and sighed.
“I would mind, C.C.,” she said.
“I know,” he told her after a long, thoughtful moment. “But I think you need to. And not for me, but for you.”
Vivian relaxed. She lifted her eyes up towards the ceiling where they came to rest on the isinglass chandelier.
“Lindy was the wild one,” she began, and didn’t stop until it was all said. “You know, she died before Harrison was convicted and sent to prison. When he was an infant in her arms, he was kidnapped by two men, and from right there about where you’re sitting. They came in the house when Daddy was in Atlanta on business and Momma was staying in a sanitarium in Marlin getting three mineral baths a day and coughing her lungs up. It’s not odd that Momma died before Daddy, being sick and all, but I always suspected that he was why she was sick in the first place.
“But I was talking about Lindy.
“Lindy’s life was nothing but trouble. She was just sixteen. It was a scandal, let me tell you. Daddy took both of us kids out of school on the excuse that we were sick, just like Momma. Lindy was to have the baby here at home. I was to help her with taking care of it. That’s how it was supposed to happen, and pretty much did, right up until the kidnapping. We were babies ourselves, Lindy and me. But Daddy kept the whole affair hush-hush as far as the community was concerned. I think it was the servants who talked and the rumor made the rounds of the Island. I’m still hearing it to this day.
“Who was the father? You don’t want to know, C.C. That’s the blackest secret of all. And whatever you may have heard, it’s nothing compared to the truth. Just know that the father has been dead these many years. He was older than her by twenty years. That in itself would have been a scandal. But no. He was supposed to be a gentleman. Longnight was invited under my father’s roof and at his first opportunity he took advantage of my sister and her wild ways. And the child? Harrison? This is the amazing part. Harrison lived his first eight years after the kidnapping right here on the Island, less than two miles
from this house. Right under our very noses. I found that out later from Jack.
“Later in life Jacky found out who his little brother actually was. His mother confessed on her deathbed to keeping Harrison after her husband kidnapped him. There was money involved too. I suspected my own father of collusion in the kidnapping, but there has never been any evidence. Something went awry with the kidnapping, though, and the child didn’t end up where he was supposed to—where the conspirators had planned. That much I know. That much of the story came out when Jack’s mother died.
“Why do you think I asked you to hire Jack Pense all those years ago, C.C.? It was to keep what little family I have left—or maybe you could see it as extended family, even though we’re not blood-related. I wanted somehow to help him. And Harrison…he never knew who he was…where he came from. And now he’s in prison for the rest of his life.”
“No, he’s not, Vivian,” Cueball said softly.
“What?”
“He’s free. And he’s killed again. It was your nephew who killed Jack. And he also killed old Homer.”
“No!”
“Yes,” Cueball said.
Vivian began sobbing. Cueball restrained himself from reaching out to her for a moment, then, being Cueball, he pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and handed it to her.
“People don’t carry handkerchiefs anymore, C.C.,” she said and almost laughed between her sobs.
“I know,” he said.
“You know, we held out hope that the baby would come back to us one day. Lindy thought he was an angel of God, only because it would take a fallen angel to sire such a beautiful thing. Only fallen angels can come down to Earth.”
“A fallen angel?” Cueball asked.
“Harrison Lynch’s father.” Vivian said. “If you knew who I was talking about, you would agree that he was either a fallen angel or a demon straight from hell. I suppose it all works out the same. Daddy even named his import company after Lindy’s label for the baby.”