by Lewis Shiner
They dragged O’Roarke’s corpse to the hole and threw it in. The head came loose in the process and Chighizola sent it tumbling after the body with a short kick. “So much,” he said, “for Brimstone Jack.” Malone shoveled mud onto the corpse, eager to see it disappear, to give his shaking hands something to do.
“You have your own boat, I trust,” Lafitte said.
Chighizola nodded, then was taken with a bout of coughing. “By Christ, this air is foul. Yes, we...borrowed a felucca from the dock.” Chighizola seemed exhausted. Fabienne took him by the arm. When she looked away from him, at either Lafitte or Malone, her face filled with contempt.
“The three of you can take the treasure back in your boat then,” Lafitte said. “I shall keep this one for myself.”
“You will take none of the gold?” Malone asked.
Lafitte shook his head. “It would only be extra weight.”
Fabienne said, “I will help Louis back to the boat. The two of you can manage the trunk.”
Malone watched her help Chighizola up the hillock. “This is the end, then. You will simply disappear again into Mexico. To hide in a drunken stupor from a world you have not the courage to change.”
Lafitte smiled. “Courage is certainly not something you lack. Not for you to speak to me this way.”
“I have come to respect you,” Malone said. “I had hoped for better from you.”
“Would it please you to know that I have given much thought to your words? All that thought, and now the sight of your gold and the things it has already brought you. Quarrels and deceit and death. For one who is wrong in so many, many ways, you are right in at least one small one. Perhaps it is time to take the lessons of Campeachy to the world. To Europe. Perhaps to this German, Marx. I think we might have much in common.”
Malone held out his hand. “I wish you luck.”
Lafitte took it. “And I you. I fear you will need it far more than I.”
Lafitte got in the boat. “How will you get to Europe without gold?” Malone asked. “What will you have to offer this Marx?”
Lafitte took up the oars, then looked back at Malone. “Life is simpler than you believe it. I hope some day you will see that.” He raised one hand and then pushed away from the bank, into darkness.
malone divided the treasure between the two gunny sacks and carried them to the other boat. The sacks must have weighed thirty pounds each. That much gold alone was worth a fortune, even before including the value of the jewels.
Chighizola did not look well. He lay with his head in Fabienne’s lap, pale and sweating. Malone rowed them out into the bay, then Fabienne raised the sail. She was far more skillful than Lafitte had been. She took them through the Deer Island sandbars without incident, the water hissing smoothly past the hull.
There was no sign of Lafitte or his boat. He had utterly disappeared.
As the lights of the harbor grew close, Fabienne said, “We shall not return to your house, I think. Louis is very sick. We shall find the first boat headed for New Orleans and be gone this morning.”
“I will not argue with you,” Malone said. “No more than I would with Lafitte. The agreement was equal shares. You must help me divide it.”
She looked at the two sacks. “We will take this one,” she said. “You keep the rest.”
“As you wish. I shall forward your luggage to you in New Orleans.” She had picked, Malone was sure, the smaller of the sacks. His heart filled with joy.
he took the burlap sack to the carriage house. There he transferred the treasure to a steamer trunk, piece by piece. At the bottom of the sack was a golden thimble. Malone held it up to the lantern. The words CHARITY & HUMILITY were engraved around the inner lip. He placed the thimble in his waistcoat pocket, locked the trunk, and put it safely away.
He was clean, with his muddy pants and shirt hidden away, by sunrise.
discreet inquiries provided Malone with a man in San Felipe willing to dispose of “antiquities” with no questions asked. Malone began to carefully convert the treasure to gold specie, a piece at a time, whenever he travelled north on bank business.
In the fall of 1851 he arranged an invitation to dinner at Sam Williams’ house, set on a twenty-acre tract west of the city. Williams was in his mid-fifties now, his hair completely white and parted high on the left side. He was short and heavyset, with a broad forehead and deep lines at the corners of his mouth. He took Malone up to his cupola, where they stood on the narrow walkway and watched for ships in the Gulf. They could hear Williams’ daughter Caddy, aged nine, as she played the piano downstairs.
“I understand you have come into some money,” Williams said.
“Yes, sir. An inheritance from a long-lost uncle.”
“And you are interested in politics.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There is a good deal an able politician could accomplish these days. I regret I had no knack for it. People found me cold. I do not know why that is.” After a moment he said, “You know they are determined to destroy my bank.”
“There is a faction, of course, sir, but...”
“Make no mistake, they are out to finish me. They consider me a criminal because I made a profit while I worked for the public good. Why, profit is the heart of this country. It is the very thing that makes us grow. And paper money is essential to that growth. Paper money and venture capitalism. Mark my words. That is where the future lies. You’re married to—”
“Becky Kinkaid, sir. John Kinkaid’s daughter.”
“Yes, a good man. And an important connection. You will want to hold on to her, son, believe me. That name can take you a long way.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, let us see. We can start you out on the city council. It will not be cheap, of course, but then you understand that already.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good lad. Nothing like a realistic attitude. You will have need of that.”
there was nearly a run on the C&A the following January when a rival bank folded. But Galveston merchants exchanged Robert Mills’ paper at par and disaster was narrowly averted. In March the Supreme Court upheld Sam Williams’ charter. The anti-bank faction replied with yet another suit, this one based on the illegality of paper money. In April Malone took his seat on the city council and bought his first block of shares in the Commercial and Agricultural Bank.
He found himself with many new friends. They wore tight-fitting suits and brightly colored waistcoats and smoked Cuban cigars. Their opinions became Malone’s own by a process he did not entirely understand. But he learned how things were done. A divorce, for example, or even a separation, was not to be considered. Instead he kept a succession of mulatto girls in apartments on the Gulf side of the island, girls with long, curling black hair and unguessable thoughts behind their dark eyes. In time he found that he and Becky could live together with a certain affection and consideration, and it was quite nearly enough. Except for certain hot, muggy nights in the summer when his dreams were haunted by Fabienne.
Still, they were preferable to the nights when he dreamed of towers of stone and folded bank notes and Brimstone Jack O’Roarke with a machete buried in his neck. On those nights he awoke with his hands clutched in the air, on the verge of a scream.
In the next five years he moved from the city council to the Railroad Commission. The next step was the state legislature, via the election in February of 1857. Malone had thought himself a Democrat, but Williams’ power lay with the Whigs. The Whigs were traditionally the money party in Texas, and so Malone became a Whig. The campaign was expensive, and took a firm pro-banking stance. On January 19th, banker Robert Mills was fined $100,000 for issuing paper money. Two days later Williams settled out of court on similar charges, paying a token $2000 fine. Editorials condemning banks and paper money appeared throughout the state.
The Democrats carried the election. The week after his defeat, Malone accepted a position on the board of directors of the C&A.
That afternoon the bank closed early. Malone stopped for a whiskey on the way home and found the bartender honoring paper money at 75 cents on the dollar. Malone saw only fear and resignation in his eyes. “I got kids, mister,” he said. “What can I do? Blame the bankers.”
Williams continued to pay gold the next day. The police came to keep lines orderly. By noon the fear had gone out of the customers’ eyes. By the end of the month the crisis had passed, only to make way for a new one: counterfeit C&A notes.
The weeks began to blur. In December, Sam Williams’ eldest son died. In January the Supreme Court postponed another anti-banking suit, and Williams’ lawyers fought delaying actions through the spring and summer. In the first days of September the yellow fever came again.
Malone watched the fever take Becky, watched her skin jaundice and her flesh melt away. Williams’ wife Sarah, ever thoughtful, sent servants with ice to soothe Becky’s fever. It was no more use than Jefferson’s herbs. She died on September 7th, a Tuesday.
That Friday Samuel May Williams succumbed to old age and general debility. He was 62.
It was the end of an era. Malone moved out of Becky’s parents’ house and took a suite of rooms on Water Street. The building was not far from where Lafitte’s Maison Rouge had stood. Nothing remained of the treasure but the golden thimble, which Malone still carried in the watch pocket of his waistcoat. He sat at his window and studied the workmen as they built the trestle for the first train from Houston, due to arrive in a little over a year.
He still attended board meetings, though there was little hope the bank could survive. Malone watched with detachment. He saw now how money had a life of its own. For a while he had lived the life of his money, but that life was drawing to a close. The money would go on without him. It was money that had brought the future to Galveston, not Malone. The future would have come without him, in spite of anything he might have done to stop it, had he wanted to. Lafitte had learned that lesson long ago.
He gave up the last of his string of mistresses. The sight of her parents, living on fish heads and stale bread, was more than he could bear. He mounted one final campaign for mayor. His platform advocated better schools, better medicine, a better standard of living. But he was unable to explain where the money would come from. He lost by a landslide.
In March of 1859, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the Commercial and Agricultural Bank of Texas was illegal. Its doors were closed, its assets liquidated. The last of Malone’s money was gone.
he arrived in New Orleans early in the morning. The city had grown as much as Galveston had. The changes were even more obvious to his stranger’s eye. The old quarter was bordered now by a new business district, with bigger buildings growing up every day.
They still knew Chighizola’s name at the market. Many of them had been at his funeral, years before. They knew his children and they remembered the beautiful octoroon with the French name. Malone followed their directions through crowded streets and stopped at an iron gate set into a brick wall. Through the arch he could see a shaded patio, broadleafed plants, small children.
Fabienne answered the bell herself. She was older, her skin a dusty tan instead of gold. Strands of gray showed in her hair. “I know you,” she said. “Malone. The hunter of treasure. What do you want here?”
“To give you this,” Malone said. He handed her the golden thimble.
She took it and turned it over in her hands. “Why?”
“I am not sure. Perhaps as an apology.”
She held it out to him. “I do not care for your apology. I do not want anything of yours.”
“It is not mine,” Malone said. He closed her hand over it and pushed it back toward her. “It never was.”
He turned away. A sudden movement in the crowd caught his attention and, for a moment, he thought he looked into the sparkling black eyes of Jean Lafitte, unchanged, despite the years. Malone blinked and the man was gone. It was merely, he thought, another ghost. He took a step, then another, toward the river and the ships. He had enough left for a passage somewhere. He had only to decide where to go.
“Wait,” Fabienne said.
Malone paused.
“You have come this far,” she said. “The least I can do is offer you a cup of coffee.”
“Thank you,” Malone said. “I should like a cup of coffee very much.”
Dirty Work
The office smelled like money. Brand new carpet, somebody’s expensive perfume still hanging in the air. The chairs in the waiting room are leather and the copy machine has a million attachments and there’s pictures on the wall that I don’t know what they’re supposed to be. Made me ashamed of the shirt I was wearing, the cuffs all frayed and some of the buttons don’t match.
The secretary is a knockout and I figure Dennis has got to be getting in her pants. Red hair and freckles and shiny skin that looks like she just got out of a hot shower. A smile like she really means it. My name was in the book and she showed me right on in.
Dennis shook my hand and put me in a chair that was slings and tube steel. The calendar next to his desk had a ski scene on it. Behind him was solid books, law books all in the same binding, also some biographies and political stuff.
“Too bad you couldn’t make the reunion,” Dennis said. “It was a hoot.”
“I just felt weird about it,” I said. I still did. It looked like he wanted me to go on, so I said, “I knew there’d be a bunch of y’all there that had really made good, and I guess I...I don’t know. Didn’t want to have to make excuses.”
“Hard to believe it’s been twenty years. You look good. I still wouldn’t want to run into you in a dark alley, but you look fit. In shape.”
“I got weights in the garage, I try to work out. When you’re my size you can go to hell pretty quick. You look like you’re doing pretty good yourself.” Charlene is always pointing to people on TV and talking about the way they dress. With Dennis I could see for the first time what she’s talking about. The gray suit he had on looked like part of him, like it was alive. When I think about him in grungy sweats back at Thomas Jefferson High School, bent double from trying to run laps, it doesn’t seem like the same guy.
“Can’t complain,” Dennis said.
“Is that your Mercedes downstairs? What do they call those, SLs?”
“My pride and joy. Can’t afford it, of course, but that’s what bankers are for, right? You were what, doing something in oil?”
“Rig foreman. You know what that means. ‘I’m not saying business is bad, but they’re telling jokes about it in Ethiopia.’”
Dennis showed me this smile that’s all teeth and no eyes. “Like I told you on the phone. I can’t offer you much. The technical name for what you’ll be is a paralegal. Usually that means research and that kind of thing, but in your case it’ll be legwork.”
Beggars can’t be choosers. What Dennis pays for his haircut would feed Charlene and the kids for close to a week. I must look ten years older than him. All those years in the sun put the lines in your face and the ache in your bones. He was eighteen when we graduated, I was only seventeen, now I’m the one that’s middle aged. He was tennis, I was football. Even in high school he was putting it to girls that looked like that secretary of his. Whereas me and Charlene went steady from sophomore year, got married two weeks after graduation. I guess I’ve been to a couple of topless bars, but I’ve never been with anybody else, not that way.
It was hard for me to call Dennis up. What it was, I got
the invitation for the class reunion, and they had addresses for other people in the class. Seemed like fate or something, him being right here in Austin and doing so good. I knew he’d remember me. Junior year a couple of guys on the team were waiting for him in the parking lot to hand him his ass, and I talked them out of it. That was over a girl too, now that I think about it.
Dennis said, “I got a case right now I could use some help with.” He slid a file over from the corner of the desk and opened it up. “It’s a rape case. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
Dennis sat back, kind of studying me, playing with the gold band on his watch. “I mean my client is the defendant. The thing is—and I’m not saying it’s this way all the time or anything—but a lot of these cases aren’t what you’d think. You got an underage girl, or married maybe, gets caught with the wrong jockey in her saddle, she hollers ‘rape’ and some guy goes to the slammer for nothing. Nothing you and I haven’t ever done, anyway.”
“So is this one of those cases?”
“It’s a little fishy. The girl is at UT, blonde, good family, the guy is the wrong color for Mom and Dad. Maybe she wanted a little rough fun and then got cold feet. The point is, the guy gets a fair trial, no matter what he did.” He took a form out of the file. “I’ll get you a xerox of this. All I want is for you to follow this broad around for a couple of days, just kind of check her out.”
“How do you mean?”
“Just get an idea of what kind of person she is. Is she some little ice princess, like she wants the DA to believe? Or is she showing her panties to anybody with a wallet and a dick?”
“Geez, Dennis, I really don’t know...”
“There’s nothing to it. This is absolutely standard procedure in a case like this. She knows she’s going to have people watching her, it’s just part of the legal bullshit game.” When I didn’t say anything he said, “It’s ten bucks an hour, time-and-a-half if you go over forty hours a week, which I don’t see this doing. We pay you cash, you’re responsible for your own taxes and like that, and if you forget to declare it, that’s your lookout. Hint hint. If this works out we can probably find some other things for you.”