“What if I can give you a hit man out of Mexico?”
Curtis knew he could. But no one else believed him, and now it didn’t matter.
“I still can’t speak to you.”
Curtis was skinny, and he was still larger than Mendes. Hanging Strasberg over his head had seemed like a real smart move a month ago.
“What if“ Mendes started to say, but he lost himself in thought before Curtis could answer. Curtis looked at the man and closed his eyes. Mendes had a volcanic desperation about him. He would have said or done anything.
“What if I told you there was three million dollars buried in the desert?” Mendes asked breathlessly.
The doors opened.
***
Curtis drove straight to a liquor store in a bad neighborhood. The cashier asked if he was having a party. He tried to smile and almost cried. When he got home, he drank until he couldn’t drink anymore. He threw up, and then poured another. It burned his throat and stomach, but it didn’t stop him. He fell asleep sitting up with a glass in his hand.
When he awoke, his head and his body felt horrible, and he was obsessed with a terrible new idea.
Chapter Three
Cashman – Austin, TX
After the agents left, when Cashman finally walked out of the bathroom, he found the hallway filled with people who worked in the building, whispering or on cell phones or peering through the window or sharing whatever they knew of what had happened, which was damn near nothing. He crept past them into his suite, and his secretary, a lovely woman when she was calm, practically exploded.
“Arlo has been arrested!” she yelled.
Of course he has, thought Sheldon Cashman.
***
Maeve Strasberg was Arlo’s daughter. She was a chunky girl with red hair who had no problem asking other people to do things for her. She always smiled when she did it and said thank you so nicely that Sheldon just found himself doing these things anyway, even though he didn’t want to. Even if it was a great imposition. Or even a little bit unethical.
“I know you spend time with my father,” she had said years ago. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that he’s not well.”
He hadn’t. Cashman had not noticed because he didn’t know the man particularly well. Cashman was an accountant and Strasberg was an accountant, and they shared certain resources due to proximity and had a drink at the Christmas party every year. Beyond that, he was another face he said hello to in the hallway.
“My father has Alzheimer’s. He’s getting worse.”
“Is he still working?”
“He works part time in tax season. He does taxes for a few old clients who have been with him for years. Older folks, mostly. Truth be told, we let him do it because it keeps him calm and gives him purpose.”
No sooner had he asked what he could do to help, which he meant as a figure of speech, than Maeve Strasberg had handed him a stack of files. Would Cashman mind going over the numbers, just to make sure Mister Strasberg hadn’t made any massive accounting mistakes?
While his mind had shouted, “You have got to be kidding me,” her mouth was smiling and thanking him and she was standing and making her way to the door. She had dumped the files and ran. He went for a ride that afternoon.
It was years later, after he had continued to look over the old man’s numbers, when Sheldon Cashman had realized that it would be infinitely safer for him if Arlo Strasberg went to work as Eduardo Mendes’ accountant.
Eduardo - Beaumont Prison, TX
Eduardo was in line for food in the prison cafeteria when he looked down and saw a huge damp black head pressed upon his arm. He felt a warm, wet nose on his wrist, and it slid up his arm to his soft, gentle bicep.
The man pulled back and inhaled deeply. His eyes were closed, and his mouth hung open. On his face was a look of mild ecstasy.
“I smelled it too,” said a voice behind him. Eduardo turned. Some fat white trash behemoth was in line behind him, smiling wistfully, front teeth long gone.
“Everyone in here smells institutional,” said the behemoth. “You smell wonderful.”
Eduardo had been processing all day. Normally at this time, he might be about to take his third shower. Today, he would not. He had been given a bar of soap. He was placed in his cell and promised himself that he was going to strip off all of his clothes and immediately scrub off any trace of good soap or cologne that might still cling to his body.
The head deputy was Nixon. He was black and hard and never took his hat off of his head. He had the deep, quick voice of military and back country. He was hard to understand and quick to anger if you didn’t. He assigned the jobs. He had sent Eduardo to the kitchen.
When the group dispersed, Eduardo asked Nixon as politely as possible if he could have a word with him in private.
“You can have a word with me right here and now,” Nixon said.
Eduardo didn’t want anyone to hear this conversation. He didn’t want to be noticed. He certainly didn’t want to be noted for what he was about to say.
“Sir,” he began. He had to call this man sir. He had learned this much already. “Could we please discuss my kitchen assignment?”
Nixon didn’t speak, and he didn’t react. He didn’t so much as blink.
“Sir,” he tried to speak as quietly as possible, in a voice that didn’t sound condescending. That was the hard part for him. “Sir, if I have to work here, I think I might be of much more use in an office, or doing some accounting, or maybe helping in one of the classrooms.”
Nixon began whipping through the papers on his clipboard until he found what he wanted.
“It says right here you got high school education.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You need college education for those jobs.”
“I understand, sir, but I went to Saint Paul’s.”
“Saint Paul’s. What’s that now?”
“It is a preparatory school.”
“What they prepare you for?”
“They prepare you for college.”
“Well,” said Nixon, “they shoulda prepare you for working in the kitchen.”
On his first day, he saw how the food was handled.
The man who had sniffed him worked in the kitchen too. Fat, juicy beads of sweat hung tenuously to the edges of his beard, and as he leaned over the pan of fresh mashed potatoes, Eduardo watched six or seven drops fall from his beard directly into the food. He walked back out to the dining hall with the tray.
Eduardo tasted a sweetness in his mouth, and he knew he would be sick. He had eaten the mashed potatoes yesterday.
***
Bobby Jordan came into the office around ten in the morning. He walked slowly and kept his hat on his head. He carried a steaming cup of black coffee. He had a desk here with nothing on it, but he walked right past it and went to Curtis’ cube. It was empty.
There was always half a library of books and spreadsheets on Curtis’ desk, and this day was no exception. Boxes of papers filled with wrong turns and dead ends were stacked in corners. Folders and binders strewn across the floor. It looked like a random mess, but Curtis, to his credit, always knew where everything was.
Jordan walked down the hall to Montrose’s office. It was in the corner and had tall glass windows. It probably impressed some people as much as it impressed Montrose himself. As he went, he noted that the whole building seemed quiet, even though it was a Monday. It seemed a little bit of life had gone out of the place.
Other people would have knocked, but Bobby Jordan strode right in.
“Is Curtis around?” he asked.
Montrose put his phone down from whatever he had been doing.
“I haven’t seen him,” said Montrose.
Curtis was usually the first man through the door to the office. He might have a powerful headache, smell like booze, or be dressed in yesterday’s suit, but there he would be at his desk.
“Is something wrong?” Montrose asked.
“Yes and no,” said Jordan, glancing behind him to see if anyone was listening. “You asked me to have a talk with him the other day. We had it.”
“And?” asked Montrose.
“And it didn’t go so well.”
“It wasn’t supposed to. It was a pretty big screw up. Big things were promised and not delivered. We didn’t come out of that looking too good.”
He knew what Montrose really meant. He’d known others like him.
“I think I was a little hard on the kid.”
“Maybe he needed to hear it.”
“Maybe he didn’t need to hear it quite the way it was said.”
He saw Montrose reach for his phone again, the surefire sign that he was losing interest.
“I don’t blame the kid if he needs a few days away from work. I’m just a little worried about him. He tends to be a man of extremes.”
That was the nicest way he could think of to say it. Montrose played by the rule of pretending he didn’t know. Most bosses he had known carried the same philosophy.
“No, Curtis has been into the office. He’s been busy from the look of it.”
Good Lord, thought Bobby. What has Curtis gotten himself into now?
Montrose was on his feet and walking, and Bobby followed him down the hall at his own pace. Montrose stood in the door to the conference room that Curtis had taken over for himself. He’d turned it into his own personal war room. Jordan was slightly worried about what he was going to find in here, and of what intense and self-destructive off-shoot of his last obsession Curtis had immersed himself in now.
When he saw it, he wasn’t sure what to think.
He saw the city of Austin. He saw clean streets and a blazing sun. He saw polished wood and faux leather chairs. He smelled pine sol.
The massive montage of Colon’s murder had been removed. The boxes had been packed up and taken away. The random autopsy photos were gone. There was not a scrap of paper in the room.
***
Flan was coming.
Tobias Flan was a stooge. Eduardo Mendes had realized that the moment he’d first seen him. Flan looked like a freeze-dried jack o’lantern. His face was thin and ruddy, and when he smiled or laughed or attempted to ingratiate himself, he turned red. Eduardo had met him one October. He passed Halloween decorations on the way into his office where he made a sizeable cash deposit on a retainer for his services. Cash was against his better judgment, but based on who had suggested Flan’s services, he was in no position to argue.
“Our mutual friend recommended you,” said Eduardo.
“Who is that?” asked Tobias Flan. He smiled and grew redder. He was even shorter than Eduardo, who looked at him knowingly, not wanting to say Colon’s name. Flan raised his eyebrows in a question.
He doesn’t know, Eduardo thought. He is the stooge.
Flan must work for someone who prefers not to handle things like this directly, Eduardo realized. Colon had been very specific about hiring this lawyer, going so far as to hand Eduardo a business card on his balcony overlooking the Sierra Madre. It was a spectacular view, hovering over the city to face the broad side of the mountain, but all Eduardo had been able to see was Colon himself.
“What are you going to do with that?” Eduardo asked, pointing at the briefcase.
“Don’t worry. It will be safe,” said the lawyer.
“It had better be.”
Flan had the early makings of varicose veins on his nose. The red spider web was just starting to bloom. Eduardo sniffed the air. He had an amazing sense of smell. He had expected alcohol, but smelled nothing.
Flan might be the man with the credentials who ran errands for those with money and power. He could just be the man whose job it was to float propositions and funnel contributions. But he was nothing more.
Eduardo said thank you because it was polite, but meant none of it. Inspiration struck him as he reached the door.
“Toby,” he said.
“Yes?” Flan was still smiling.
“Toby. That’s the name of the slave. In that famous movie about slaves, isn’t it?”
The lawyer’s grin was made of iron.
“I wouldn’t know, Mister Mendes,” he said.
“I think it is,” said Eduardo. Then he left.
***
He never would have believed it, but on this day, he couldn’t wait to see Tobias Flan. Eduardo had been here a week. He had called Flan and spoken to him on the phone, but the first thing Flan had said during the call was not to speak about the case or anything else.
He sat around the small, hot room for twenty minutes before they arrived. Flan shuffled in with the guard, talking foolishness the entire way, with a ridiculous smile on his face. He was babbling about boats and fishing with the guard, who was either too nice or too stupid to end the conversation by walking out the door. The guard stood there nodding as Flan rambled on about the outboard motor and the new anchor, wasting more of Eduardo’s precious time. Finally, he seemed to notice Eduardo, said, “Say hi to your dad for me,” to the guard, and shook hands with Eduardo, who felt he was being examined.
“Are you okay?”
Eduardo had a shiner around his left eye. He chose not to think about it and had most certainly decided not to talk about it with Flan. He went directly to business.
“Is it safe to talk in here?”
“It is,” said Flan, smiling.
“There is no way they are recording our conversation?”
“No,” said Flan. “That would be an egregious violation of the Constitution.”
“Good. Do you have paper?”
“I do.”
“Give it to me.”
Flan obeyed and fished a yellow legal pad out of his bag. Eduardo tore off the top page and laid it on the desk. “Pen,” he demanded. Flan obeyed.
He began writing. He had crafted this note in his mind many times, in between planning murders and laying food out for these animals. When it came time to put pen to paper, the letter wrote itself. He folded it three ways and pushed it across the table in front of the lawyer.
“When you leave here, I want you to purchase a disposable cell phone. Make one phone call with it. Call that number. Read this letter to whoever answers it. Then throw the phone away. Do you understand me?”
Flan’s jack o’lantern face smiled. He nodded.
“Do you understand me?”
It had been so long since he had given an order that he missed the sound of it leaving his lips. He demanded an answer just to be sure his voice could pack authority.
“May I ask you a question, Mister Mendes?”
Eduardo was about to say no and tell Flan to run the errand as he was told when Flan asked the question anyway.
“Are you retarded?” Flan asked.
Eduardo sat back in his chair. He was stunned.
“What did you say to me?”
“I said, are you fucking retarded?” repeated Flan.
Eduardo put the pen down on the table. He felt his blood surging and swore there were bright halos around his eyes. He was not losing control of this. He’d lost too much control already. He would reassert.
“I don’t care for the way you’re speaking to me.“
“Let me ask another way: do you think I’m retarded?”
“No, I“
“Do you think you’re making prison look sexy?”
Eduardo didn’t answer.
“Listen to me. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who is so fucking stupid that they would take a list of instructions from someone in here wearing a goddamn orange jumpsuit would have to be legally mentally impaired. You left a large sum of money with me in exchange for future services. As your attorney. That does not include being your fucking errand boy. Do you understand me?”
Flan’s face was red and maniacal. He looked like an evil jack o’lantern.
“Would you like my advice as an attorney?”
Eduardo flashed back to his interview with Curtis, and how he had
felt. He had felt dirty and sick. This room was tiny, built for two people, and there was no privacy. He now feared that he was about to fill it with vomit. He felt dizzy. His head swam. He found himself saying yes.
“Take this piece of paper and whatever is on it. I’m not going to touch it. Destroy it. I suspect you won’t want to explain whatever it says, and these people will look in your trash. They will look in your toilet. Would you like my second piece of advice?”
Eduardo did.
“Listen to your lawyer when he tells you to never, ever talk to the police. It doesn’t matter if you’re smarter than they are or cooler than they are or make more money. They’re the police. Whatever you say will be used against you. So, in the future, shut the fuck up. Got me?”
Eduardo got him.
“Same with your cellmate. Or some guy who sits next to you at lunch. You don’t have any friends in here. You have enemies and people who will sell you out for a nickel. You want my last piece of advice?”
Eduardo swallowed. “Please,” he said. Eduardo hated saying please.
The jack o’lantern smiled as gently as he could.
“Someone, and I don’t know who, recommended my services to you. That means you know someone with some sense to them. I hope you have some too. My services are expensive. You never see my name in the newspaper or on television. I don’t want attention and neither do my clients. I handle things quickly and quietly. If you want a lawyer to go on the six o’clock news and rampage about his innocent client and racial profiling and the massive lawsuit he’s going to file, then you need to find a new lawyer. I’ll gladly recommend one. If you want this handled with what I call discreet intensity, then I’m your man. Am I your man, Mister Mendes?”
“Yes,” said Eduardo, very quietly.
“Good. I’ve been after the feds all week to hand over their diligence on you immediately. They’re not in a hurry to give it to us. My gut feeling is that there is a problem. From what I have seen, most of it is coming down to one IRS agent named Walter Curtis. I believe you met him.”
South of Evil Page 5