by Rehder, Ben
Heads nodded in agreement.
Barry Yates, another old-timer, said, “Yeah, Chuck, I don’t know about this. We’ve sunk a lot of money into that boy over the years. He’s on the right committee and all. Hate to see it go to waste.”
“I understand that perfectly, Barry. I’m just saying it’s one way we could go.”
Lance Longley said, “Didn’t Herzog try to reason with this scumbag? I mean, shit, he might as well try and make it illegal to wear cowboy boots. Ain’t no way something like that’ll ever pass. We’ve been through all of this before.”
“Herzog said he told him that.”
“But what about the photos?” Hobbs asked again. “Do we know what they show?”
All the men looked to Hamm for an answer.
Hamm knew this was a delicate topic. “Well, no, not exactly.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Far as I can tell, there’s some nudie shots of Herzog and the woman. But, hey, at least it is a woman. Beyond that, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Oh, man,” Longley said, shaking his head, “this could be brutal. For all we know, the guy’s into S and M or something weird like that.”
Barry Yates leaned toward Dexter Ashby. “S and what?”
Ashby shrugged.
No one spoke for several moments as they all pondered the predicament.
Then Longley said, “You think this has something to do with Scofield? You gotta admit, it’s pretty weird. Herzog gets this phone call, and then one of our former members—”
“Christ, Lance, don’t let your imagination run away with you,” Hamm said. “It was just an accident. Vance got stupid and tried to cross. So let’s get back to the original issue. What are we gonna do about the photos?”
The room got noisy as some of the men began to argue, offering differing opinions on the right course of action. Hamm decided the time was right, so he said, “There is something else we could try.”
Again, the men all went silent.
“Well…what?” Longley asked.
“It’s simple, really,” Hamm said. “We find out who the blackmailer is.”
Now the room was still. Nobody wanted to voice the next question, the obvious one. Hobbs finally spoke up. “Okay, so maybe we get lucky and track him down. Then what?”
Everyone looked at Hamm.
“Then,” he offered, “we firmly point out that he’s playing dirty pool.” Hamm gave a broad grin. “We convince him to be a nicer man.”
“We?” Longley asked, a trace of concern on his face.
“Well, to get technical, no, not us. But I happen to know a guy who can handle this kind of thing just fine.”
Longley said, “Someone you can trust? I mean, we don’t want this thing getting out of hand.”
“I agree,” Hamm said, nodding. “No, the man I have in mind is perfect. He has a delicate touch.”
Buford Rhodes hoped they wouldn’t have to turn the surgeon’s hand into a mangled stump, but you never could tell. Buford’s partner, Little Joe Taggart, was right there egging him on, but Buford knew he had to play it cool. Disfigure the guy, and then what? Guy can’t earn. Can’t pay back the money he owes. And then Buford’s client Emo—Fort Worth’s top bookie—would be pissed as hell. Yeah, there’s a certain satisfaction in enforcing the rules—especially when the client turns out to be a prick, like this guy—but you can’t lose your head in these situations. End up with a reputation as a hothead and then you’re screwed. Clients like Emo no longer want your services. Even the bail bondsmen Buford worked for on occasion wouldn’t want a guy who brings the skips back on a stretcher every time.
They were in the surgeon’s kitchen. Guy named Winsted. Buford didn’t know if it was the man’s first name or last, but he didn’t care. The critical fact was this: Winsted owed Emo seventeen five, and it was way overdue. According to Emo—telling Buford things he didn’t need to know—Winsted had had a nasty run of luck, but it was an over-under on a Cowboys/Eagles game that did him in. Dumb old Winsted had gone with the over, meaning the combined score had to total more than forty-seven. A late field goal by the ‘Boys brought the total to forty-five, but that was all she wrote. Game over.
“I know what this is about,” Winsted had said earlier, grinning, when they were still in the living room. Mr. Nice Guy at first. Invited them right in, like they were there to fix his toilet or something. He even made a pleasant comment about Buford’s suit, the light blue one with the silver studs. Then: “You’re here about the money, right?” Winsted said, all smiles. House like this—small mansion, really—the man could afford to be in a good mood.
“Yeah, we work for Emo,” Buford replied. Big smile right back at him. Not playing the hard-ass just yet.
“Damn straight,” Little Joe said, already swaggering, his eyes all jumpy. Buford gave him a quick glare. Settle down.
“Yeah,” Winsted said, “good ol’ Emo. I wanted to talk to him about the situation. I was gonna call.”
Buford tipped his Stetson back, then made a gesture, spreading his hands, like Hey, what’s there to talk about? “It’s pretty simple, really. You owe him some money. We’re here to collect it.”
“Hell yeah,” Joe said.
Winsted frowned. Buford didn’t like that. Then Winsted said, “See, about that last bet. I’m not so sure I really owe anything for that one.”
Buford raised his eyebrows. Explain, please.
“I was drunk when I placed that bet! That’s what I told Emo, but damn, he wouldn’t listen. He knows I drink too much sometimes. We talked about it.” Winsted was raising his voice now. Not a good thing to do. Buford figured, the way the surgeon was slurring, he was pretty smashed right now, too. And to think this boozer actually operated on people. Kind of shook your faith in the American health care system, such as it was.
“Your drinking habits are not our problem,” Buford said.
“Hell no, they ain’t,” Joe added. “Want me to pop him one?”
Buford shook his head.
“Maybe we can work something out,” Winsted said, keeping an eye now on Joe. But he was starting to get a tone, like this was all a big inconvenience. “Damn, I need a drink,” he said, and proceeded into the kitchen. Never even offered his guests anything, which was downright rude. Buford and Little Joe followed right behind him.
In the kitchen—a room as large as Buford’s apartment—Winsted poured himself a glass of scotch. His eyes were still watery from the first gulp when he said, “Here’s the deal. You run on back and tell Emo I’m willing to pay half. I think that’s fair.”
“Run on back?” Buford said, not liking Winsted’s choice of words. Man had no negotiating skills at all.
“Yeah.”
Joe looked at Buford, a pleading look in his eye. “I could break his finger.”
Buford shook his head. “You’ll pay half? That’s your proposal?”
The surgeon nodded, his eyes still on Joe, but talking to Buford. “Better than nothing, right? Emo should be damn happy with it.”
Buford was thinking, Don’t these shit-heels know they shouldn’t bet if they can’t afford to lose? Now it was clearly time to put a scare into the guy, make it plain that his offer was completely unacceptable.
Buford liked kitchens because there were all kinds of handy devices in there. Interesting implements you could use to put pressure on a guy. Knives and forks, of course. Blender. Stove. Hell, even a cheese grater could do the trick if you used it right.
Buford chose the disposal.
In one swift move, he grabbed Winsted’s left arm and twisted it behind the man’s back. Then he took Winsted’s right hand and plunged it deep into the drain hole in the sink. Winsted had slender fingers and a narrow wrist. It was an easy fit. Little Joe was whooping and hollering. Winsted’s glass of scotch was on the floor now, ice skittering across the expensive tile.
“Christ! What the fuck’re you doing!” Winsted cried, groaning, straining to get away. But it was no
use.
Buford nodded to a wall switch on the right side of the sink, and Joe eagerly covered it with his hand. “I’m gonna tell you how this is gonna go,” Buford said, “and I want to be absolutely clear on it just so there’s no confusion. So here’s the deal. I’m gonna ask you again, and you’re immediately gonna answer me. No lies, no bullshit, and no reason for me to turn your hand into hamburger. ‘Cause believe me, I’m prepared to do that. In fact, it really don’t make much difference to me either way. The only thing on the plus side is, I get paid more if you give me what I want. You follow me?”
Winsted grunted in pain.
“Good, then,” Buford said. “We have an understanding. But I should tell you—I’m not gonna ask twice. You get one chance, and one chance only. We clear?”
“Yeah, we’re clear.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear, Winsted. You’re doing real good so far. Okay, now, the big question. Where is our money?”
“I…I don’t have it!”
Buford knew bullshit when he heard it. Guy like this had to have access to cash somehow. Maybe not right here in the house, but somewhere. Bank account, safe-deposit box, something like that. “Don’t lie to me, Winsted.”
Winsted was stupid enough to say, “Fuck you.”
The man had balls, that’s for sure. “Pardon me?”
“You dress like a Nashville retard.”
Little Joe snorted and said, “Oh, mister, you done it now.”
Buford didn’t even have to think about it. He nodded to Joe again, and his partner immediately flipped the switch.
The light above the sink came on.
“Assholes,” Winsted giggled through the pain. “Disposal’s broken, anyway. Coupla fucking goons.”
“That’s quite an impressive vocabulary,” Buford replied.
“Daniel friggin’ Webster,” Little Joe added.
Buford didn’t have the heart to point out that Joe meant Noah, not Daniel.
He noticed another switch on the left backsplash, farther from the sink than the first one. He’d seen that before—some builder putting the switch more than an arm’s length away to prevent your average pinhead from accidentally maiming himself. “Try that one,” he said to Joe, nodding, ready to watch Winsted suffer, not caring about the money so much now.
Winsted’s body immediately tensed up.
“No, don’t!” the surgeon said. “I’ll pay. Just turn me loose.”
“All of it?”
Little Joe had his hand on the switch, all bright-eyed and ready to go.
“Yeah, I promise, all of it.”
“Where?”
“In a shoebox. Upstairs.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Let me go.”
“One last thing. Do you like my suit or not?”
“Jesus, what?”
“I mean, first you said you liked it, and then you call me a retard. Which is it?” Buford gave Winsted’s left arm an extra twist, the bone no doubt just millimeters from breaking.
Winsted wailed in agony. “Goddamn, I like it! I like it!”
“You think it’s snazzy?”
“Yeah, snazzy as hell.”
Buford eased Winsted’s hand out of the drain hole and patted him on the back. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? A wise man makes wise choices, Winsted, and I think you just made a good one. Trust me.”
As Winsted led the way to the staircase, Buford’s cell phone chirped. A familiar number on the caller ID.
“Uncle Chuck,” Buford said. “How’s it going?”
Driving home in the dark, eleven o’clock, John Marlin tried to remember Vance Scofield’s face. He had only met Scofield one time, in passing, at the hardware store, and that was before Phil Colby had filed a lawsuit against him.
Phil Colby was Marlin’s closest friend, and had been since grade school; both of them were Blanco County natives. Colby owned four thousand acres in the center of the county, a small spread compared to the original thirty thousand acres of prime ranchland purchased by Samuel Colby six generations ago.
Pieces of the ranch had been snipped off and sold over the years, a huge chunk auctioned during the Depression, and Phil Colby had actually lost the remainder for several years due to a problem with property taxes in the late nineties. He’d been struggling financially, beef prices in the basement, but now he was back on his feet. What he’d done was, he’d finally opened the gates to deer hunters willing to pay a fair price. That income boosted Colby’s bottom line considerably and kept the ranch solvent. He wasn’t wealthy—far from it—but he was able to live without the fear of losing the land on which he was so deeply rooted.
Then came the question of high fencing.
Colby knew he could charge the hunters higher fees to hunt behind a deer-proof fence—but Colby didn’t believe in high fences, feeling that they gave the hunter an unfair advantage on all but the most immense ranches. He went so far as to remove the high fence that had been erected when his ranch was temporarily out of his hands. It wasn’t just a personal decision; it was Colby’s opinion that ranchers with high fences were violating the law, restricting the movement of animals owned—according to the Parks and Wildlife Code—by “the people of the state of Texas.”
He felt strongly enough about the issue that when Scofield announced plans for a high fence the previous fall, Colby decided to take his neighbor to court. Marlin had warned Colby that he was fighting a losing battle, that his lawsuit would be tossed out.
“Screw ‘em,” Colby said. “It’ll make a statement.”
“And what would that statement be?” Marlin asked.
“High fences suck,” Colby replied, grinning wide.
That was Colby—just as ornery as hell and willing to take a stand.
It turned out Marlin was right. Colby hired an attorney, the attorney filed the suit, and it was dismissed the first day in court. Vance Scofield’s lawyer had pointed out that current law allowed a property owner to erect a fence of any reasonable height. The judge saw no reason to disagree. It was all a fairly civil proceeding, until afterward, when Colby and Scofield exchanged some words and nearly got into a fistfight in the corridor.
In the end, Colby felt that he had achieved his goal—to draw attention to the topic. In the eyes of the press, Colby was the common man against the wealthy, David versus Goliath. He practically had folk-hero status in some of the blue-collar hunting camps around the state.
Now, just a few months after the whole spectacle, Vance Scofield was missing. So, as Marlin maneuvered up his long caliche driveway, he wasn’t surprised to see a familiar blue truck parked in front of the house. Phil Colby was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, drinking a beer, Marlin’s dog, Geist, sleeping at his feet.
As Marlin mounted the steps, Colby called in falsetto, “How was your day, dear?”
Marlin plopped into a chair next to the swing. He hadn’t been this tired since the end of deer season. “Oh, your average nightmare.”
“Just got back into town,” Colby said. “I heard about Scofield.”
“Yeah, where the hell were you? We could’ve used you out there.” Colby was a member of the Blanco County Search and Rescue Team. Marlin couldn’t imagine that Colby’s feelings about Scofield would have kept him away from the river.
“Went to the cattle auction in Fredericksburg,” Colby said. He tilted his beer bottle. “You look like you could use a cold one.”
“That’d be nice.”
Colby shook his empty bottle. “Well, grab me another one while you’re at it.”
Marlin glared at him. Colby had a key to the house, and he was known to make himself right at home. That suited Marlin just fine, although he occasionally gave Phil some grief for leaving the beer supply low.
“All right, then, allow me,” Colby said, rising. He returned with two fresh bottles and said, “So give me the details.”
Marlin summarized the day’s events, concluding with the fact tha
t there had been no sign whatsoever of Scofield. There had been no calls reporting any other missing persons, so Marlin was reasonably certain Scofield had been alone in the Ford Explorer.
“You pretty sure he was in the vehicle?” Colby asked.
“Man, I don’t know. If he managed to get out, you’d think he would’ve called us by now. Somebody would know where he is.”
“You talk to any relatives?” Colby asked.
“Deputies reached his father, but he wasn’t any help. Ex-wife in Austin, same thing.”
“What about his hunting buddies? That club they’re all in.”
“None of them had a clue.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“Get back out there in the morning and start over. The water’ll be lower and I can use the boat.”
“How about a cadaver dog?”
“Too early for that. Maybe the third or fourth day.”
“Guess he could be hung up underwater. Caught on a tree stump or something.”
Marlin nodded.
“Or way downstream,” Colby added. “Didn’t one ol’ boy make it all the way to Lake Travis once?”
“Yeah, a family in a boat found him four days later.”
That victim’s body had traveled more than thirty miles on the Pedernales River, over dams and low-water crossings, to the large lake just northwest of Austin.
Marlin studied the moon, just past full, hanging low in the sky like a tomato on the vine. The storm system was long gone, and no more rain was expected anytime soon.
“What time’re you gonna get back out there?” Colby asked.
“First light.”
“Can you swing by and pick me up?”
“Yeah, that’d be great.” Marlin knew from experience, there were usually fewer volunteers on the second day. It stood to reason. The sense of urgency was no longer there. No emergency services would be needed; the body would be found when it wanted to be found.
Marlin took a swig of beer, and both men sat without talking for quite some time, listening to the chatter of crickets and the scrape of limbs against the rain gutters.
“You haven’t told me much about Dallas,” Colby said.
Marlin made a gesture with his hands. Not much to tell.